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Louise Chandler Moulton, .tT. 20 

Frontispiece 



LOUISE CHANDLER 
MOULTON 

Poet and Friend 



BY 

LILIAN WHITING 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1910 






Copyright, 1910, 
By Ltttlk, Bkown, axd Company. 



All rights reserved 



Published, September, 1010 



^rfntrrg 
S. J. Pabkhill & Co., Boston, U. S. A. 



ICI,A^718G4 



CONTENTS 

Chaiter Page 

I. 1835-1853 1 

II. 1853-1860 26 

III. 1860-1876 51 

IV. 1876-1880 79 

V. 1880-1890 106 

VI. 1890-1895 169 

VII. 1895-1900 205 

VIII. 1900-1906 229 

IX. 1907-1908 263 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Louise Chandler Moulton, aet. 20 Frontispiece 

From a daguerreotype. 

FACING PAGE 

Elmwood Cottage, Pomfret, Conn., the girlhood home 

of Louise Chandler Moulton 5 

Engraved on a watch belonging to her mother. 

Louise Chandler Moulton, aet. 18 34 

From a daguerreotype containing a slip of paper upon which 
Mrs. Moulton had written, "Taken in Boston the day I 
first saw my husband, — Spring of 1853." 

Facsimile of a letter from Robert Browning ... 96 

Lucius Lemuel Chandler, Mrs. Moulton's father . . 104 
From an old daguerreotype. 

The library in Mrs. Moulton's Boston home, 28 Rut- 
land Square 109 

From a photograph. 

Louise Chandler Moulton 122 

From a photograph by W. Kurtz. 

Facsimile of the original draft of " Laus Veneris," in 

Mrs. Moulton's handwriting 143 

Facsimile of a letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes . l64 

Louisa Rebecca Chandler, Mrs. Moulton's mother . 199 
From an old daguerreotype. 

William U. Moulton 215 

From a photograph. 



viii ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

Louise Chandler Moulton 227 

From a photograph by Mendelssohn, London, taken about 

1896. 

Louise Chandler Moulton's grave in Mount Auburn, 

Cambridge^ Mass 275 

Facsimile of book plate from the Memorial Collection 
of the Books of Louise Chandler Moulton, 
Boston Public Library 282 



LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

POET AND FRIEND 

CHAPTER I 

1835-1853 

The poet in a golden clime was born 

With golden stars above. — Tennyson. 

The lingering charm of a dream that is fled. — L. C. M. 

GENIUS, love, and friendship make up 
a triple dower which holds within 
itself the possibilities of high destiny. 
Their changing combinations comprise all in- 
tensities of human joy and human sorrow: 
the richness of sympathetic companionship; 
the enchantments of romance; the glow and 
passion of artistic achievement; and that 
power of initiating noble service which in- 
vests life with the 

loveliness of perfect deeds 
More strong than all poetic thought. 

In few lives have these possibilities been 
more fully realized than in that of Louise 
Chandler Moulton, poet and friend, and 



2 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

lover of the beautiful. Poet born and poet 
made, she developed her natural lyric gift 
into a rare mastery of poetic art. She wore 
her singing-robes wdth an unconscious grace, 
and found in her power of song the determin- 
ing influence which colored and shaped her 
life. Her lyrics w^ere the spontaneous expres- 
sion, the natural out-pouring, of a lofty and 
beautiful spirit. Her poetic instinct radiated 
in her ardent and generous sympathies, her 
exquisite interpretations of sentiment and 
feeling; it informed all her creative work 
with a subtle charm pervasive as the fra- 
grance of a rose. Her artistic impulse was, 
indeed, the very mainspring of her life ; it ex- 
pressed itself not only in the specific forms of 
lyrics and of prose romance, but in her varied 
range of friendships and in her intense and 
discriminating love of literature. Mrs. Moul- 
ton was not of the order of the poet who 

puts what he hath of poetry in his verse 
And leaves none for his life. 

Her life as well as her art expressed her gift of 
song. She was a poet not only in singing, but 
no less in living. Her friendships were singu- 
larly wide and eclectic, determined always 
from the inner vision. They were the friend- 
ships of mutual recognition and of sympathetic 



POET AND FRIEND 3 

ministry. Her tenderness of feeling responded 
to every human need. Others might turn 
away from the unattractive; to her the sim- 
ple fact that kindness was needed was a claim 
which she could not deny. 

This was the more striking from the fact 
that from her early girlhood her gifts, her cul- 
ture, and her personal charm won recognition 
in the most brilliant circles. To be as uncon- 
sciously gracious to peasant as to prince was 
in her very nature. Thomas Wentworth Hig- 
ginson, alluding to Mrs. Moulton's social pres- 
tige in London, wrote : 

*' . . . It is pleasant to feel that she owes this 
result quite as much to her qualities of char- 
acter as to her gifts of intellect. There never 
lived, perhaps, a more thoroughly open- 
hearted and generous woman; and the poor- 
est and least gifted applicant might always 
seek her as successfully as the most famous 
and influential." 

This symmetry of character, a certain fine 
balance of the gifts of mind and heart, was 
the natural outcome, it may be, of a worthy 
ancestry. So far as is known, the Chandlers 
lived originally in Hampshire, England, where, 
in the sixteenth century, arms were granted to 
them. Many of these Chandlers were men 



4 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

distinguished in their day. In 1887 was com- 
memorated at Philadelphia the two hundredth 
anniversary of the arrival in this country of 
one of the first Chandlers known to have im- 
migrated. This was a follower of Fox, who 
fled from persecution, and settled in Penn- 
sylvania. A group of ten English Puritans 
settled long before the Revolution in what 
was afterward the township of Pomfret, Con- 
necticut : and from one of these was descended 
Lucius Chandler, the father of Louise. The 
Chandler family throughout gave evidence of 
decided intellectual ability, and this was 
strengthened by marriages with other sound 
Puritan stock. Through her paternal grand- 
mother Mrs. Moulton was descended from the 
Rev. Aaron Cleveland, of literary reputation 
in the late eighteenth century, and of account 
in his day as a wit. This relationship linked 
her in remote cousinship with Edmund Clar- 
ence Stedman, a tie which both cherished. 
The two poets congratulated themselves on 
a common great-grandmother who was a 
classical scholar, famed for her familiarity 
with Greek. 

Lucius L. Chandler married Louisa Re- 
becca Clark, also of good English ancestry. 
Mrs. Chandler has been described by Harriet 
Prescott Spofford as "a gentle, gracious 




Elmwood Cottage, Po.mfret, Cokn., the Girlhood Home 
OF Louise Chandler Moulton 

Page 5 



POET AND FRIEND 5 

woman, a noted beauty in her youth, but 
singularly free from the vanity and selfishness 
of most noted beauties." The only surviving 
child of this marriage was born at Pomfret on 
April 10, 1835, and was christened Ellen 
I^ouise. Mr. Chandler's farm lay on the 
edge of the quiet Connecticut town, the land- 
scape pleasantly diversified by adjacent hills 
and forests, and the modest, comfortable 
home was surrounded by flowers and trees. 
In later years, recalling her childhood, Mrs. 
Moulton wrote: 

My thoughts go home to that old brown house 
With its low roof sloping down to the east, 

And its garden fragrant with roses and thyme 

That blossom no longer except in rhyme, 
Where the honey-bees used to feast. 

Afar in the west the great hills rose. 

Silent and steadfast, and gloomy and gray. 
I thought they were giants, and doomed to keep 
Their watch while the world should wake or sleep. 
Till the trumpet should sound on the judgment-day. 

And I was as young as the hills were old. 

And the world was warm with the breath of spring; 
And the roses red and the lilies white 
Budded and bloomed for my heart's delight, 
And the birds in my heart began to sing. 

A winsome little sprite seems Ellen Louise 
to have been, revealing, even in her earliest 
years, a quaint touch of her father's courtly 
dignity combined with her mother's refine- 



6 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

ment and unerring sense of the amenities of 
life. Mrs. Chandler's fastidious taste and a 
certain innate instinct for the fitness of things, 
invested her always with a personal elegance 
that surrounded her like an atmosphere. A 
picture lived in her daughter's memory of her 
arriving one day, in a bonnet mth pink roses, 
to visit the school; and of her own childish 
thought that no other little girl had so pretty 
a mother as her own. In after years she 
pictured, in one of her sonnets, this beloved 
mother : 

How shall I here her placid picture paint 

With touch that shall be delicate, yet sure? 

Soft hair above a brow so high and pure 
Years have not soiled it with an earthly taint, 
Needing no aureole to prove her saint; 

Firm mind that no temptation could allure; 

Soul strong to do, heart stronger to endure; 
And calm, sweet lips that utter no complaint. 
So have I seen her, in my darkest days. 

And when her own most sacred ties were riven. 
Walk tranquilly in self-denying ways, 

Asking for strength, and sure it would be given; 
Filling her life with lowly prayer, high praise, — 

So shall I see her, if we meet in heaven. 

The little maid's schooldays seem to have 
begun before she was out of the nursery, for 
a tiny relic has drifted down the years, in the 
form of a very brilliant rose painted on a slip 
of paper, — the paper faded and yellow with 



POET AND FRIEND 7 

age, the rose as fresh as if colored yesterday, 
— bearing the legend: "Miss Ellen L. 
Chandler deserves my approbation for good 
behavior in school. Charlotte Taintor." And 
this documentary evidence of the good be- 
havior of "Miss Ellen" is dated August, 1839, 
when she was but little past her fourth birth- 
day. It is pleasant to know that the future 
poet began her earthly career in a fashion so 
exemplary; and a further testimonial exists 
in a page which has survived for nearly sev- 
enty years, on which a relative, a friendly old 
gentleman, had written, in 1840, lines "To 
Little Ellen," which run in part : 

Ah, lovely child! the thought of thee 
Still fills my heart with gladness; 

Whene'er thy cherub face I see 
Its smiles dispel my sadness. 

This artless ditty continues through many 
stanzas, and contains one line at which the 
reader to-day can but smile sympathetically : 

Thy seraph voice with music breathing; 

for this rhapsodical phrase connects itself with 
the many tributes paid in later life to her 
"golden voice." Whittier, expressing his de- 
sire to meet "the benediction of thy face," 
alludes also to the music of her tones. That 
the voice is an index of the soul is a theory 



8 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

which may easily be accepted by those who 
have in memory the clear, soft speech of Mrs. 
Moulton. Often was she playfully entreated to 

lend to the rhyme of the poet 
The music of thy voice; 

the lines seeming almost to have been written 
to describe her recital of poetry. 

The fairies who came to the christening of 
this golden-haired and golden-voiced child 
seemed, indeed, to have given her all good 
gifts in full measure. She was endowed with 
beauty and with genius; she was born into 
surroundings of liberal comfort and of refine- 
ment; into prosperity which made possible 
the gratification of all reasonable desires and 
aspirations of a gifted girl. It was her fortune 
through life to be sheltered from material 
anxieties. To a nature less sensitively per- 
ceptive of the needs and sorrows of others, to 
one less generous and tender, the indulgence 
which fell to her as an only and idolized 
child, might have fostered that indifference to 
the condition of those less favored which de- 
prives its possessor of the richest experiences 
of life. With her to see need or misfortune was 
to feel the instant impulse to relieve or at 
least to alleviate the suffering. Colonel Hig- 
ginson, in recalling her life in England said : 



POET AND FRIEND 9 

" I shall never forget, in particular, with 
what tears in his eyes the living representa- 
tive of Philip Bourke Marston spoke to me 
in London of her generous self-devotion to his 
son, the blind poet, of whom she became the 
editor and biographer." 

Emerson has declared that comforts and 
advantages are good if one does not use them 
as a cushion on which to go to sleep. With 
Mrs. Moulton her native gifts seemed to gen- 
erate aspiration and effort for noble achieve- 
ment. 

Among the schoolmates of her childish 
years was the boy who was afterward the 
artist Whistler, who was one year her senior. 
As children they often walked home from 
school together, and one night the little girl 
was bewailing that she could not draw a map 
like the beautiful one he had displayed to an 
admiring group that day. It was a gorgeous 
creation in colored crayons, an "arrange- 
ment" that captivated the village school with 
much the same ardor that the future artist 
was destined to inspire from the art connois- 
seurs of two continents. A sad object, indeed, 
was the discordant affair that Ellen Louise 
held up in self-abasement and hopelessness 
while she poured out her enthusiasm on his 



10 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

achievement. The lad received this praise 
with lofty scorn. "That 's nothing," he ex- 
claimed ; "you think this is anything ? Take it ; 
I don't want it; you just see what I can do 
to-morrow ! I '11 bring you then something 
worth talking about." And with the precious 
trophy in her possession, the little girl made 
her way home. True to his word, the next 
morning "Jimmy" brought her a package 
whose very wrapping revealed the importance 
of its contents; and when she had breath- 
lessly opened it, there was disclosed an ex- 
quisite little painting. Under a Gothic arch 
that breathed — no one knew what enchanted 
hints of "the glory that was Greece and the 
grandeur that was Rome," or some far-away 
dreams of Venice, or other dimly prefigured 
marvel in the child's fancy, was an old monk ; 
through the picture were silver gleams, and a 
vague glint of purple, and altogether, it held 
some far prophecy of the brilliant future yet 
undisclosed. All her life Mrs. Moulton kept 
the gift. It had an unobtrusive place in her 
drawing-room, and even figured modestly at 
the great Whistler exhibition which was held 
in Boston by the Copley Society after the 
death of the artist. 

In some ways Ellen Louise had a rather 
lonely childhood save that an imaginative and 



POET AND FRIEND 11 

poetic nature peoples a world of its own. 
The little girl had, as it chanced, no play- 
mates near at hand to supply the place of 
brothers and sisters; and her companions 
were those that fancy created. In later years 
she wrote of this period: 

*' I never felt alone. Dream children com- 
panioned me, and were as real to my thoughts 
as if other eyes than my own could have seen 
them. Their sorrows saddened me, their 
mirth amused me, they shared my visions, 
my hopes; and the strange dread with which 
I — brought up in a Puritan household where 
election and predestination were familiar 
words — looked forward to the inevitable end. 

"Yet haunted as I was by the phantom 
future, I was happy in the present. I am 
afraid I was what is called a spoiled child. I 
loved horses and I loved verses, and on my 
eighth birthday two presents were made me — 
a well-equipped saddle horse, and a book of 
poems. The horse ran away with me that 
same afternoon while my too sociable father, 
who was riding with me, stopped to talk 
town politics with a neighbor; but my steed 
raced homeward, and I reached my own door 
in safety. The book of verse I have yet. It was 
by Mrs. Hemans — now so cruelly forgotten." 



n LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Her imaginative nature showed itself in 
many ways. She says : 

" I was not allowed to read fiction or to play 
any but the most serious games. . . . Hence 
I was thrown upon my own resources for 
amusement. I remember when I was only 
eight years old carrying in my head all the 
summer a sort of Spanish drama, as I called 
it, though I knew little of Spain except some 
high-sounding Spanish names w^hich I gave 
to my characters. Each day, as soon as I 
could get away by myself, I summoned these 
characters as if my will had been a sort of in- 
visible call-boy, and then watched them per- 
forming. It did not seem to me that I created 
them, but rather that I summoned them, and 
their behavior often astonished me. For 
one of them, a young girl, who obstinately 
persisted in d;ydng of consumption, I sincerely 
grieved." 

She had written from the age of seven verses 
which would hardly have discredited her 
maturer years. A stanza written when she 
was nine runs : 

Autumn is a pleasant time 
Breathing beauty in our clime; 
Even its flowerets breathe of love 
Which is sent us from above. 



POET AND FRIEND 13 

The lines seem to have written themselves, 
but as Autumn had been assigned as a theme- 
subject at school she dealt ^ith it also in 
prose. She began w4th the assertion: "Au- 
tumn to the contemplative mind is the loveli- 
est season of the year"; and closed with the 
rather startling line: "All these are beautiful, 
but let us leave the contemplation of them 
until another winter dawns on the languid 
sea of human life." One almost wonders that 
under a training which permitted English so 
florid Mrs. Moulton was able to develop her 
admirable style. At ten she was writing 
*'An Address to the Ocean" and a medita- 
tion on "Hope." Another effort was "The 
Bell of My Native City," and this she ex- 
plained in a footnote as an imaginative com- 
position, composed to express the feelings of 
an exile who had been " unjustly banished 
from his country." She was taken a few 
months later on a little trip to "Tribes Hill" 
on the Mohawk, and in a "History of My 
Journey Home from Tribes Hill" records 
gravely : 

*' It was a beautiful September morning that 
ushered in the day of my departure. I rose 
with the first dawning of light to gaze once 
more upon those scenes whose loveliness I 



14 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

had so loved to trace. I rejoiced to pay a 
tribute of gratitude to some of the many 
friends whose society had contributed so 
much to my happiness when away from the 
home of my childhood. ... At noon I started. 
. . . For many a mile, as we w^ere drawn with 
dazzling rapidity by our wild steam horse 
(whose voice resounded like the rolling of 
distant thunder), I could catch glimpses of 
the dark blue waters of the Mohawk, which I 
had so loved to gaze upon, and to whose 
music I had so often listened in the hush of 
evening, from my open window, or when 
walking on its green banks with a friend, 
dearly loved and highly prized, but whom I 
shall, perhaps, meet no more forever. ... As 
I rode along my thoughts reverted to her. 
The river gleaming in quiet beauty from be- 
neath the green foliage of its fringing trees 
reminded me of the hours we had spent to- 
gether in contemplating it. The excitement 
of travelling and the loved home to which I 
was hastening were alike forgotten in these 
reveries of the past." 

A sentence of more than a hundred and fifty 
words that follows quite graphically depicts 
a walk taken with this friend, and the child 
continued : 



POET AND FRIEND 15 

"From such reveries of the past was I 
awakened by the stopping of the cars at Al- 
bany. That night we embarked on board a 
steamboat, and as we glided o'er the Hudson 
river, my heart bounded with dehght. I 
stood alone before an open window, and my 
soul drank in the richness of the scene." 

One can but smile at this rhapsody of the 
child of eleven, but it is after all suggestive 
of literary powers genuine if undeveloped. It 
shows, too, a nature sensitive to beauty and a 
heart full of quick responsiveness to friend- 
ship. The gifts of the woman are foreshad- 
owed even in the extravagances of the girl. 

The blank books in which Louise recorded 
her impressions and thoughts and copied out 
her verses in the years between eight and 
eighteen afford material for a curious study 
of unfolding tendencies. A religious meeting 
to which she is taken suggests a long disserta- 
tion on "The Missionary;" and this sketch 
assumes an imaginative form. The mission- 
ary and his bride are described as voyaging 
over the ocean to the field of his labors in these 
terms : 

"... But when they had entirely lost sight 
of land Charles clasped his loved one to his 
heart and whispered, 'Be comforted, dearest; 



16 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

we go not alone, for is not He with us who 
said, ** Lo, I am with thee always, even unto the 
end of the world!'" . . . The young bride 
burst into an agony of tears. . . . Her hus- 
band led her on deck, and showed her the 
sun's last, golden rays that lay upon the waves, 
sparkling like a thousand brilliants. ... It 
seemed a sea of burning gold. ... A high 
and holy resolve rose in the hearts of the 
young missionaries. . . . They had left a circle 
of brilliant acquaintances for the untutored 
heathen. . . . They left the deck to sit down 
in a quiet nook and read the word of Him 
for whom they forsook all earthly pleasures." 

Not only do the note-books give such hints 
of the future story-teller, but they abound in 
verse. It is noticeable that although much 
of this is crude and inevitably childish, it 
is yet remarkably free from false measures. 
The child had been gifted by heaven with an 
ear wonderfully true. The books contain 
also many quotations copied from the volumes 
she was from time to time reading. Moore, 
Mrs. Hemans, Tupper, Willis, Longfellow, 
Wliittier, Campbell, are among the names 
found here most frequently. Curiously enough 
the record shows no trace of Scott, of Byron, 
of Wordsworth, or of Coleridge. 



POET AND FRIEND 17 

One of the felicitous orderings of her school- 
days was that which placed her as a pupil of 
the Rev. Roswell Park, the Episcopal rector 
in Pomfret, and Principal of a school called 
Christ Church Hall. Here she easily carried 
off the honors when "compositions" were re- 
quired. 

"Will Miss Ellen Louise Chandler please 
remain a moment after the school is dis- 
missed," was the disconcerting request of the 
teacher one day. 

The purpose of the interview was a private 
inquiry where the girl had "found" the poem 
which she had read in the literary exercises of 
the afternoon. 

"Why, I can't tell," she answered; "it all 
wrote itself from my own mind." 

The instructor looked at her earnestly for a 
moment, — this dainty young girl with the 
rose-flush deepening in her sweet face, — and 
replied: "Then I sincerely congratulate you." 
And she went on her way. 

The commonplace books of her thirteenth 
year, kept while she was still a pupil at this 
school, show more clearly than ever the 
dawning power of the young poet. Her read- 
ing was not indiscriminate, but selective, in- 
clining almost equally to poetry and to serious 
prose. Of the usual schoolgirl love of novels 



18 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

is little evidence ; and this is the more curious 
as her fancy was active, and she was writing 
many stories. Literary form, also, was be- 
ginning to appeal to her, and she copies "A 
Remarkable Specimen of Alliteration." 

She took life seriously in the fashion of her 
generation. It was a time when every girl 
loved a diminutive; she wrote her name 
*' Nellie" and signed her verses "Nellie C." 
Those were the days of the annuals, "Friend- 
ship's Wreath," "The Literary Garland" 
and the like, and to these after once she began 
to see herself in print, "Nellie C." became 
quickly a favorite contributor. 

She tasted the rapture of a poet born who 
first sees his verses in print, when she was 
fourteen. This is her account: 

" I used to rhyme as long ago as I can remem- 
ber anything, and I sent my first contribution 
to a newspaper when I was fourteen years 
old. ... I remember how secretly, and al- 
most as if it were a crime, I sent it in; and 
when I found the paper one evening, upon 
calling at the post-office on my way home 
from school, and saw my lines — my very own 
lines — it seemed to me a much more wonder- 
ful and glorious event than has anything since 
that time. . . . Perhaps it was unfortunate 



POET AND FRIEND 19 

for me that it was accepted at once, since it 
encouraged me in the habit of verse, — mak- 
ing a habit which future occupations con- 
firmed. But one gain, at least, came to me, — 
the friendship and encouragement of authors 
whose work I loved. I was scarcely eighteen 
when my first book was published. I called 
it 'This, That, and the Other,' because it was 
made up of short stories, sketches (too brief 
and immature to call essays), and the rhymes 
into which, from the first, I put more of my- 
self than into any other form of expression. 
Strangely enough, the book sold largely." 

This early poem was printed in a daily of 
Norwich, Connecticut, and no recognition of 
after years could ever give quite the same 
thrill as this first sight of her name and her 
own verse in print. 

Among her girl-friends was Virginia F. 
Townsend, later to be known also as a writer 
of stories and of verse, and the pair exchanged 
numerous rhymes, rather facile than poetic, 
but doubtless useful in the way of 'prentice 
work. A poem which Miss Chandler wrote in 
her sixteenth year and called "Lenore" — in 
those days every youthful rhymester rhymed 
to Lenore, — and designated as "for music," 
was much praised by the newspapers of the 



20 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

day. It is as admirably typical of the fashion 
of the day as the bonnets of the forties which 
one finds in a dusty attic. 

Hush thy footfall, lightly tread; 
Passing by a loved one's bed. 
Dust hath gathered on her brow. 
Silently she resteth now. 

Sank she into dreamless rest 
Clasping rosebuds to her breast; 
With her forehead pale and fair 
'Neath the midnight of her hair. 



There we laid her down to sleep 
Where the wild flowers o'er her weep. 
Earth below and blue sky o'er, 
Sweetly sleeps our own Lenore. 

Another lyric, written about this time to 
Governor Cleveland on the death of his only 
daughter, contained these lines: 

What time she braided up her hair 

With summer buds and sprays of flowers. 
It was as if some saint had shed 

Heaven's light on this dim world of ours; 
And kneeling where her feet have trod. 

We watched to see the glory break 
When angel fingers at the dawn 

Heaven's portals opened for her sake. 

Of these lines Edmund Clarence Stedman 
wrote with youthful enthusiasm: 



POET AND FRIEND 21 

*' This is almost equal to the picture of 
Madeline in 'The Eve of St. Agnes,' as she 
kneels before the oriel window of the case- 
ment, high and triple-arched, in all the holiness 
of prayer." 

The stories which the young writer contrib- 
uted to the gift-books bore the most startling 
titles: *'Inez Caisco; or, The Flower of Cata- 
lonia"; ''Beatrice; or. The Beautiful Tam- 
bourine Girl"; "Evilia; or. The Enchant- 
ress." Of Isabel Sydenham, the heroine of 
one of these tales, it is told that she "threw 
open her casement," — no self-respecting 
story-teller of the mid-century called a window 
anything but a casement, — and sighed: "If 
he were only here, how we might enjoy the 
surpassing loveliness!" Of this sensitive 
creature, who naturally "yearns" for all sorts 
of impossible things, her creator remarks that 
"ideality was the predominating character- 
istic of her mind." According to gift-book 
standards no heroine could be more eminently 
satisfactory. 

Not content with being a contributor to the 
annuals of others. Miss Chandler compiled a 
gift-book of her own: "The Book of the 
Boudoir; a Gift for All Seasons, Edited by 
Ellen Louise." By her publisher's insistence 



22 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

her own portrait formed the frontispiece, and 
the book contained also an engraving of Elm- 
wood Cottage. The letter-press opened with 
an "Invocation to the Spirit of Poetry" by 
the youthful editor, and besides sketches and 
verses of her own the volume offered con- 
tributions by Mrs. Sigourney, Virginia F. 
Townsend, George S. Burleigh, Amanda M. 
Douglas, and others. 

With this publication Miss Chandler may 
be said to have come fully and formally into 
full-fledged authorship. She was deeply tinged 
with the sentimental fashions which reigned 
universally in America in the middle of the 
nineteenth century, and which had, indeed, 
by no means disappeared in England; but 
she had genuine feeling, a natural instinct for 
literary form, an ear unusually sensitive to 
metrical effect, and her real power had already 
shown itself unmistakably. From this time 
on her progress in her art was sure and 
constant. 

One influence of her youthful environment 
may be mentioned here since it has been often 
commented upon. The strain of melancholy 
habitual in Mrs. Moulton's poetry has been 
ascribed to the shadow w^hich was cast upon 
her childhood by the sternness of the Calvin- 
istic faith. An English critic has written : 



POET AND FRIEND 23 

" She was brought up in abysmal Puritan 
Calvinism, and her slumber at night was dis- 
turbed by terrific visions of a future of endless 
torment. The doctrine of election pressed 
heavily on her youthful soul. . . . The whole 
upbringing of children in Puritan circles in 
those days was strict and stern to a degree 
impossible to be realized in a day when vul- 
gar sentimentalism rules supreme, and when 
it is considered cruel and harsh to flog a re- 
bellious boy. The way in which children were 
brought up by the Puritans of New England 
In Mrs. Moulton's day may have had its 
faults, but it turned out a class of person 
whom it is hopeless to expect the present day 
methods of education will ever be able to 
produce." 

In this are both truth and exaggeration. 
The parents of Mrs. Moulton were, it is true, 
Calvinists, but they were neither bigots nor 
fanatics. The question was quite as much 
that of the sensitive, delicately responsive 
temperament of the child as of the doctrine 
in which she was reared. Being what she was, 
she realized to the full the possible horrors in- 
volved in the theology of the time, and imagi- 
natively suffered intensely. She once said to a 
London interviewer: 



24 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

" I remember that the Calvinistic doctrines I 
was taught filled my imagination with an awful 
foreboding of doom and despair. I can recall 
waking in the depth of the night, cold with 
horror, and saying to myself, *Why, if I 'm 
not among the elect, I can't be saved, no mat- 
ter how hard I try,' and stealing along on my 
little bare feet to my mother's bed, praying to 
be taken in, with a vague sense that if I must 
be lost in the far future, at least now I must go 
where love could comfort me, and human 
arms shelter me from the shapeless terrors 
that mocked my solitude." 

While, however, the lack of a more encour- 
aging interpretation of Divine Goodness un- 
doubtedly was to a degree responsible for the 
minor chords which became habitual in her 
verse, the natural longing which is part of the 
poetic nature, was in Mrs. Moulton unusually 
strong and was exaggerated by the literary 
modes of her day. On the whole the influ- 
ences of her childhood were sweet and sound 
and wholesome. Her natural love of beauty 
was fed and developed, her inherent literary 
taste was nourished by sympathy and by 
success, and her wonderful sensitiveness to 
literary form trained by early and constant 
practice. It is even possible that the very 



POET AND FRIEND 25 

harshness of Calvinism, which was almost the 
only shadow, was a healthful influence which 
deepened and strengthened her art, that 
might without this have suffered from sunshine 
too uninterrupted. 



CHAPTER II 

1853-1860 

A beautiful and happy girl 

With step as light as summer air. — Whittier. 

Her glorious fancies come from far 

Beneath the silver evening-star. 

And yet her heart is ever near. — Lowell. 

At dawn of Love, at dawn of Life. — L, C. M. 

IN a lyric written by Mrs. Moulton in after 
years, occurs the lovely line quoted above, 
which seems vividly to describe her as 
she stood, a girl of eighteen, on the threshold 
of a new phase of life. 

Young as she was Miss Chandler had 
already, by her newspaper and magazine 
work, made for herself a reputation, and she 
now collected the papers which made up the 
volume spoken of in the previous chapter, 
"This, That, and the Other," with the 
encouraging result of a sale of twenty thou- 
sand copies. The North American Review 
was then almost the only magazine in the 
country exclusively devoted to criticism and 
the intellectual life. Much of the best literary 



POET AND FRIEND 27 

work of the time, in the way of fiction and 
poetry, appeared in such periodicals as Godey's 
Lady's Book, Peterson's Magazine, and the 
Hke; and to these Miss Chandler was a con- 
stant contributor. The weekly newspapers 
were rich in poems by Longfellow, Emerson, 
Wliittier, the Cary sisters, N. P. Willis, Poe, 
and many others of permanent fame. Be- 
sides these, a host of the transient singers of 
the day, literary meteors, flitted across the 
firmament, not unfrequently with some song 
or story which individually was quite as 
worthy of recognition as were those of their 
contemporaries whose power to sustain them- 
selves in longer flights and to make good the 
early promise has earned their title to perma- 
nent recognition. Mrs. Moulton's scrapbooks 
indicate how rich were the literary columns 
of the newspapers in those days. There 
being then no international copyright law, 
the American editor enriched his page with 
the latest poem of Browning, Tennyson, 
Swdnburne, or Mrs. Browning. Longfellow, 
Whittier, Holmes, Dr. Parsons, Nora Perry, 
William Winter, the Stoddards (Richard Hen- 
ry and Ehzabeth), N. P. Willis, Saxe, Mrs. 
Stowe, Jean Ingelow, Miss Mulock, Aldrich, 
and Mary Clemmer, are largely represented 
in these old scrapbooks. Many fugitive 



28 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

poems, too, appear, as the "Bertha" of Anne 
Whitney, a poem Avell entitled to Kteraiy 
immortaUty; the "Three Kisses of Farewell," 
by Saxe Holm; the "Unseen Spirits," by 
Willis, a poem too little known; and Mr. 
Aldrich's "The Unforgiven," excluded from 
his later editions, but which contains those 
beautiful lines : 

In the East the rose of morning biddeth fair to blossom soon, 
But it never, never blossoms in this picture; and the moon 
Never ceases to be crescent, and the June is always June. 

Miss Chandler's book was one of over four 
hundred pages, illustrated by theiamous Rouse 
(whose portrait of Emerson has always been 
so highly considered), and its fine engravings 
and its. binding of crimson cloth combined 
to give it a sumptuous appearance. The 
Springfield Republican gave it pleasant recog- 
nition in these words: 

"The writings of a young girl still on the 
threshold of life and still to be regarded as a 
bright, incarnate promise, — her writings are 
very graceful, very tender, and very beauti- 
ful, just what the flowers of life's spring 
should be." 

The young author dedicated her book to 
her mother in tender phrase, and her artless 
"Preface" was one to disarm any adverse view. 



POET iWD FRIEND 29 

In after years Mrs. Moulton smilingly 
replied to some questions regarding her ini- 
tiation into authorship : 

"I remember the huge posters with which 
they placarded the walls, headed, 'Read this 
book and see what a girl of eighteen can do.' 
I think I had the grace to be a little shocked 
at these posters, but the reviews were so kind, 
and said such lovely things that — Ah ! 
shall I ever be so happy again as when I read 
them!" 

Edmund Clarence Stedman, who had just 
left Yale College and who, at the beginning 
of his literary career, was editing a country 
paper in Connecticut, greeted Miss Chand- 
ler's book with the ardent praise of youth 
and friendship ; but these warm phrases of 
approval were also the almost unanimous 
expression of all the reviewers of the day. 
The twentieth century reader may smile at 
Mr. Stedman's youthful distrust of the "strong- 
minded woman," but his remarks are inter- 
esting. Of "This, That, and the Other," 
he wrote: 

"'This, That, and the Other,' is a collec- 
tion of prose sketches and verse from the pen 
of a young lady fast rising into a literary 



30 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

reputation; a reputation which, though it 
is achieved in no 'Uncle Tom' or 'Fanny 
Fern' mode, is no less sure than that of Mrs. 
Stowe, or Sara Payson Willis, and will be 
more substantial, in that the works on which 
it is founded are more classic and in better 
taste. . . . Miss Chandler is a native of 
Pomfret in this state, and every denizen of 
Connecticut should be proud of her talents. 
She is beautiful and interesting ; her manners 
are in marked distinction from the forward- 
ness of the strong-minded woman of the 
day. . . ." 

Epes Sargent, in the Boston Transcript, 
said: 

"... The ladies have invaded the field 
of fiction and carried off its most substantial 
triumphs. Mrs. Stowe, Fanny Fern, and now 
another name, if the portents do not deceive 
us, is about to be added — that of Miss 
Chandler, who although the youngest of the 
band (she is not yet nineteen), is overflowing 
with genius and promise. Such tales as those 
of 'Silence Adams,' 'A Husking Party at 
Ryefield,' 'Agnes Lee,' and 'Only an Old 
Maid,' reveal the pathos, the beauty, the 
power, the depth and earnestness of emotion 
that Ellen Louise has the art of transfusing 



POET A^D FRIEND 31 

into the humblest and most commonplace 
details. . . . But Ellen Louise must not be 
deceived by injudicious admiration. Her style, 
purified, chastened and subdued, would lose 
none of its attractiveness. She gives evidence 
of too noble a habit of thought to desire the 
success which comes of the hasty plaudits 
of the hour." 

The book reviewing of 1853 was apparently 
not unlike the spelling of George Eliot's poor 
Mr. TuUiver, — "a matter of private judgment." 
For although the stories of Ellen Louise were 
singularly sweet and winsome in their tone, 
with an unusual grasp of sentiment and glow 
of fancy for so youthful and inexperienced a 
WTiter, they could yet hardly claim to rank 
with the work of Mrs. Stowe. The leading 
papers of that day united, however, in an 
absolute chorus of praise for the young 
author, who is pronounced "charming," and 
"overflowing with talent"; the "refinement 
and delicacy" of her work, her "rare maturity 
of thought and style," and a myriad other 
literary virtues were discerned and celebrated 
to the extent that the resources of the language 
of the country would allow. A sonnet was 
written to her, signed "B. P. S.," which 
signature is easily translated to us in these 



32 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

days as that of B. P. Shillaber, the author 
of *'Mrs. Partington." The sonnet is en- 
titled : 

TO ELLEN LOUISE 

Take this, and that, and t' other all together, 

We like you better every day we 're breathing; 
And round our hearts this pleasant summer weather 

Your fairy fingers deatliless flowers are weaving: 
We read delightedly your charming pages 

Fraught in each line with truth and magic beauty; 
Here starts a tear that some hid woe assuages. 

And there is heard a voice that calls to duty. 
And proudly may Connecticut, sweet Ellen, 

Point to the genius bright that crowns her daughter. 
And the rare graces that she doth excel in, 

Confessed in floods of praise from every quarter. 
The world forgives the wooden nutmeg suction 
Because of you, the best Connecticut production. 

The succeeding year Miss Chandler passed 
at Mrs. Willard's Seminary in Troy, N. Y., 
and a classmate, who in after years became 
the wife of General Gillespie, thus describes 
her: 

" My acquaintance with Louise Chandler 
began when she entered Mrs. Willard's Semi- 
nary in Troy, where we were both pupils. 
She was at once very much admired and 
beloved. Her first book, called 'This, That, 
and the Other,' had been published just 
before she came, and we were all very proud 



POET AND FRIEND 33 

of her authorship. She had a lovely face, 
very fair, with beautiful, wavy, sunny hair, 
falling on either side the deep blue-gray eyes, 
with their dark, long lashes. Her voice was 
clear and sweet, with the most cultivated 
intonation." 

For the school Commencement INIiss Chand- 
ler was chosen class poet, and produced 
the regulation poem, neither better nor worse 
than is usual on such occasions. Six weeks 
later, August 27, 1855, she married William 
Upham Moulton, editor and publisher of The 
True Flag, a Boston literary journal to which 
his bride had been a frequent contributor. 

The journalists of the day made many 
friendly comments upon the marriage of their 
brother editor. Some of them ran thus : 

" The possession of a noble and true heart 
in the one, and of a gentle and winning 
nature in the other, are presages of future 
bliss." 

" Mr. Moulton is a writer of much origi- 
nality of style and great power ; an indepen- 
dent thinker, shrewd in conclusions and 
fearless in expression. Miss Chandler over- 
flows with kindness, geniality, appreciation of 
the lovely, and the power of description to a 
remarkable degree."* 

3 



34 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

" . . . Of his choice the world can speak. 
Her literary attainments have made their 
public mark, and her kindness of heart has 
won for her an eminent place in the affections 
of thousands. Our associate may well be 
congratulated on his acquisition of a new 
contributor to his happiness, and pardoned, 
in view of the richness of his prize, for leaving 
the fair of our own locality for more distant 
Connecticut." 

One of the girlish pictures of Miss Chandler 
bears the inscription, in her own writing, 
"Taken the day I first saw my husband," 
but unfortunately, the date is not given. In 
a little sketch Harriet Prescott Spofford re- 
marks that "Louise must have combined 
studying, writing, and love-making to a rather 
remarkable degree during her last year at 
school " ; and adds in regard to her marriage : 

" She was barely twenty when she married 
William Upham Moulton, a man of culture 
and of much personal attraction. Lingering 
a moment on the church porch in the sunset 
light, she has been described by one who saw 
her as a radiant being, in her bridal veil, 
blooming, blushing, full of life and joy and 
love. An exquisite skin, the *rose crushed 
on ivory,' hazel eyes, With dark lashes and 




M^ 



Louise Chandler Moulton, .t;T. 18 

Page 34 



POET AND FRIEND 35 

brows, and a confiding, fearless glance, small 
white teeth, a delightful smile, cheek and 
chin having the antique line, all united to 
make a loveliness which no portrait has 
successfully rendered, and which tender con- 
sideration and grace of manner accented to 
wonderful charm." 

Among her girlish treasures preserved for 
more than fifty years was a small blank book, 
on the fly-leaf of which she had written: 
"Ellen Louise Chandler Moulton, from my 
husband, Aug. 27, 1855, Elmwood Cottage, 
Pomfret, Conn."; and underneath in quo- 
tation, the lines: 

"Who shall decide? The bridal day, oh, make it 
A day of sacrament and present prayer; 
Though every circumstance conspire to take it 

Out of the common prophecy of care! 
Let not vain merriment and giddy laughter 

Be the last sound in the departing ear, 
For God alone can tell what cometh after — 
What store of sorrow, or what cause to fear." 

Mr. Moulton brought his bride to Boston, 
where she was at once introduced into 
those literary circles made up of the chief 
men and women of letters. "Here," said 
one who remembers her entrance into Boston 
life, "the bright, quick, impassioned girl 



36 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

speedily blossomed into the brilliant woman." 
In some reminiscences of her own in recalling 
this delightful period she said : 

" Every one was very good to me — Dr. 
Holmes, Longfellow, Whittier — all those on 
whose work I had been brought up. And then 
the broader religious thought of Boston began 
to conquer the Puritanism in which I had been 
educated. Wliittier was a Quaker, but he 
believed most of all in the loving Fatherhood 
of God, — the Divine care which would some- 
how, somewhere, make creation a blessing 
to all on whom had been bestowed the un- 
sought gift of life. He told me once how this 
conviction first came to him. It was a 
touching anecdote of his childhood when his 
mother's tenderness to the erring aroused in 
him the perception of the goodness of God. 
Whittier was a singularly modest man; if 
one praised his work he would say, 'Yes, but 
there should be a perfection of form, and 
what I do is full of faults.' Once, at an 
evening party, he was vainly entreated to 
recite one of his poems. 'No,' he said, 'but 
I wash she would,' pointing to me. I then 
read 'The Swan Song of Parson Avery,' 
and when I had finished he came across 
the room and said, 'Why, thee has really 



POET AND FRIEND 37 

made me think I 've written a beautiful 
poem.' 

" No words could overpraise the sweet gra- 
ciousness of Longfellow and Dr. Holmes to 
me, a new-comer into their world. I knew 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, also. The very last 
time I saw him he had just returned from 
California, and he crossed the Athenaeum 
Library, where we chanced to be, to ask me 
if I had ever been there myself and had seen 
the big trees. ' Wliy,' he said, 'it took thirteen 
horses to go round one tree, the head of one 
touching the tail of another — what do you 
think of that?' 

" I remember once, when I was a guest in 
his house in Concord, his telling me that he 
had long wanted to make an anthology of 
the one-poem men. And he went on to 
speak of the poets who were remembered by 
only one poem. He never carried out his 
idea, but I wish some one else might." 

It was a rich and stimulating atmosphere 
into which Mrs. Moulton entered in Boston. 
The first winter after her marriage Thackeray 
visited this country and gave in Boston, in 
January of that year (1856), his lectures on 
"The Four Georges." In recalling these, 
Mrs. Moulton afterward said: 



88 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

" I sat close to the platform, thoroughly 
entranced, and longing to speak to him — 
this great man ! longing with all a romantic 
schoolgirl's ardor and capacity for hero- 
worship. I never missed a lecture. The 
last day and the last lecture came, and as Mr. 
Thackeray came from the platform he bent 
toward me and said: 'I shall miss the 
kind, encouraging face that has sat beneath 
me for so many hours'; and I was too sur- 
prised to be able to answer him a word. But 
it is a memory that has never left me." 

Boston in the fifties had little to boast of 
in the artistic line. Henry James, writing of 
Hawthorne's time, noted with amusement 
the devotion to the "attenuated outlines" of 
Flaxman's drawings. The classic old Athen- 
aeum contained practically all that the city 
could offer in the way of art. Here were 
some casts from antique marbles, specimens 
of the work of Greenough and Thorwaldsen, 
a certain number of dull busts of interesting: 
men, a supply of engravings, and a small 
collection of paintings. The paintings were 
largely copies, but included originals by 
Allston, Copley, and a few others. 

In music the taste was pui'e, if the oppor- 
tunities were but provincial. Grisi and Mario 



POET AND FRIEND 39 

in brief visits delighted the town in opera; 
the Handel and Haydn Society provided 
oratorio; the Harvard Orchestra gave instru- 
mental concerts. In the spring of 1856 was 
held a Beethoven Festival, and the bronze 
statue, so long familiar in the old Boston 
Music Hall, was inaugurated with a poem 
by the sculptor, William Wetmore Story. 

In intellectual life Boston had long been 
distinguished among American cities. In 
these early years of Mrs. Moulton's life here 
Lowell gave his course of lectures on " Poetry" 
before the Low^ell Institute, and Curtis his 
course on *'Bulwer and Disraeli." Longfellow 
at this time was writing "Hiawatha" ; Richard 
Grant White was often coming over from New 
York to confer with the Cambridge group 
on nice points in his edition of Shakespeare. 
The interest in literature is illustrated by the 
fact that when "Maud" appeared in the sum- 
mer of 1855 Longfellow and George William 
Curtis made a pilgrimage to Newport to read 
and discuss it with Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. 
The aristocratic ideal in the world into which 
Mrs. Moulton had come was distinctly intel- 
lectual rather than plutocratic. 

The year of her marriage was also the 
year of the publication of her second book, 
a novel entitled "Juno Clifford," which was 



40 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

brought out anonymously by the Appletons. 
Again the praise of the reviewers was practi- 
cally unanimous. A Boston critic wrote : "The 
authorship is a mystery which perhaps time 
mil unravel, for rumor is ascribing it to 
lofty names in the world of literature"; and 
George D. Prentice, in the Louisville Joumaly 
in less journalistic phrase, characterized the 
story as having "numerous points of strange 
beauty and a strange pathos." 

Among the sympathetic friends who at this 
time enriched Mrs. Moul ton's life none was 
of personality more striking than Mrs. Sarah 
Helen Wliitman, whose connection with Poe 
was at once so touching and so tragic. "No 
person ever made on me so purely spiritual 
an impression," wrote Mrs. Moulton in The 
Athenceum in after years, "as did Mrs. 
Whitman. One of her friends said of her: 
' She is nothing but a soul with a sweet voice.' " 
Some of the poems signed "Ellen Louise" 
had attracted the attention of Mrs. ^Vliitman, 
and a correspondence followed. In a post- 
script to the first letter written to Mrs. Moulton 
after her marriage, Mrs. Wliitman says : 

" You ask my plans. I have none nor ever 
had. All my life I have been one of those 
who walk by faith and not by sight. I never 



POET AND FRIEND 41 

can plan ahead. The first words I ever 
learned to speak were caught from hearing 
the watchman call out in the middle of the 
night, 'All's well.' This has always been 
my great article of faith. An angel seems ever 
to turn for me at the right time the mystic 
pages of the book of life, while I stand won- 
dering and waiting, — that is all." 

On the appearance of "Juno Clifford," 
Mrs. Wliitman wrote: 

Mrs. Whitman to Mrs. Moulton 

November 15 [1855]. 

My Dear Louise: I have read "Juno 
Clifi'ord," and my "honest opinion" is that 
it is a very fascinating story, eloquently 
related. I was surprised at its finished excel- 
lence; yet I expected much from you. 

I have written a notice for the Journal which 
will appear in a few days. I will send you a 
copy of the paper. I wish I had leisure to 
tell you all I think of the book. You have all 
the qualities requisite for a successful novelist, 
and some very rare ones, as I think. The 
grief of the poor Irish girl brought tears to 
my eyes, — eyes long accustomed to look 
serenely on human sorrows. The character 



42 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

of Juno is admirably portrayed and you have 
managed the "heavy tragedy" with admir- 
able skill. I do not, however, like to have 
Juno tear out her beautiful hair by *' hand- 
fuls," and I think there is a lavish expenditure 
of love scenes in the latter part of the book; 
but all young lovers will freely pardon you for 
this last offence, and I am not disposed to be 
hypercritical about the hair. 

I can find nothing else to condemn, though 
I would fain show myself an impartial judge. 
I wish " Juno " all success, and am ever, with 
sincere regard. 

Your friend, 

S. Helen Whitman. 

P. S. — I saw the death of Miss Locke in 
TJie Times! could it have been our Miss 
Locke ? Do you know ? I am very busy 
just now. I have no good pen, and my 
pencil turns round and round like an inspired 
Dervish, but utters no sound ; so look on my 
chirography with Christian charity, and love 
me, nevertheless. 

S. H. W. 

In other letters from Mrs. Whitman, un- 
dated, but evidently written about this time, 
are these passages : 



POET AND FRIEND 43 

" I have to-day found time to thank you for 
your letter and beautiful poem. It is very 
fine, picturesque, and dramatic. These are, 
I think, your strong points, but you have 
touches of pathos. . . . You must not leave 
off writing stories, nor do I see any necessity 
of making any selection between the muse of 
poetry and the muse of romance. I should 
say, give attendance to both, as the inspiration 
comes. . . . Dr. Holmes, whom I met at 
the lectures of Lola Montez, is charmed 
by her. ..." 

" Mrs. Davis read me Mrs. [R.II.] Stoddard's 
book ['Two Men'], because you spoke of 
it so highly. It has, indeed, a strange power, 
— not one that fascinates me, but which 
impresses me profoundly and piques my 
curiosity to know more of the author. I 
marked some paragraphs which indicated a 
half-conscious power of imaginative descrip- 
tion, which I wish she would exercise more 
freely. Tell me about her in her personal 
traits of character. ... I hope you will not 
impugn my taste, dear Louise, when I tell 
you I like your 'two men' better than Mrs. 
Stoddard's. 'Margaret Holt' is a charming 
story. Why is it that Mrs. Stoddard so en- 
tirely ignores all sweet and noble emotions ? " 



44 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Mrs. Moulton's next volume was a collec- 
tion of the stories which she had contributed 
to various magazines. It was entitled "My 
Third Book," and was brought out by the 
Harpers in 1859. It was greeted as a work 
which "bears the seal of feminine grace," 
and which "reveals the beauty of Mrs. Moul- 
ton's genius." Of two of the tales a reviewer 
said, in terms which give with amusing 
fidelity the tone of the favorable book-notice 
of the mid-century: 

"'No. 101' reminds us of some wondrous 
statue, her pen has so sculptured the whole 
story. 'Four Letters from Helen Hamilton' 
are enough to stir all hearts with their [sic] 
high purpose and the beautiful ideal of 
womanhood which consecrate [sic] them." 

Continuing her old habit at school, Mrs. 
Moulton for many years kept notes of her 
abundant reading, and the comments and 
extracts set down in her exquisite handwriting 
throw a most interesting light on the growth 
of her thought. She mentions Miss Austen's 
"Sense and Sensibility" as "interesting, but 
deficient in earnestness." "Guy Livingston," 
that old-fashioned apotheosis of brute force, 
she, like most of the novel-readers of the 
time, found "fascinating." "The Scarlet 



POET AND FRIEND 45 

Letter" impresses her profoundly, and she 
copies many passages; the first volume of 
*' Modern Painters" she reads with the most 
serious earnestness, and comments at length 
upon Ruskin's view that public opinion has no 
claim to be taken as a standard in the judgment 
of works of art. Although the bride of a few 
months, and not yet twenty-one, she enters 
with the enthusiasm of a schoolgirl into the 
larger opportunities of life opened to her by 
her marriage. To English literature she gives 
herself in serious study. She writes copious 
analyses of the history of different periods, 
and critical studies of various writers. It 
was perhaps at this period that she began to 
respond to the work of the Elizabethan 
lyricists with a sympathy which marked the 
kinship which English critics found so evident 
in her poetic maturity. 

The list of books noted in these records 
during the next ten years is large and varied. 
Mrs. Gaskell, Bishop Butler, Dr. Martineau, 
Miss Mulock (Mrs. Craik), Anthony Trol- 
lope, and later George Eliot and George Mere- 
dith, are among the writers whom she men- 
tions; and from the "Self-Help" of Samuel 
Smiles in 1860 she makes copious extracts. Her 
taste was catholic, and her attitude toward 
literature always one of genuine seriousness. 



46 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Mrs. Moulton's memoranda for her own 
stories are both interesting and suggestive. 
To see as it were the mind of the creative 
writer at work is always fascinating, and 
here, as in the "American Notebooks" of 
Hawthorne, the reader seems to be assisting 
in the very hiboratory of the imagination. 
Some of these note^ are as follows: 

" Have the story written by a man. Have 
him go all his life worshipping one woman, 
even from boyhood. He wins her, — she is 
cold but he is satisfied and believes she will 
grow to love him. After three years she 
leaves him. He gives his life to seeking her. 
At last finds her just as she is attempting to 
drown herself, and takes her home." 

And again: 

*' Have a wealthy family travelling in Egypt, 
and a child born to them there who shall bear 
the name of the country. This child, Egypt 
Sunderland, seems to be strangely influenced 
by her name, and develops all the peculiar 
characteristics of the Egyptian women." 

She conceives the outline plots for numerous 
stories, — among the titles for which are 
"The Sculptor's Model," "The Unforgiven 
Sin," "The River Running Fast," "The 



POET AND FRIEND 47 

Embroidered Handkerchief," "A Wife's Con- 
fession," "The Widow's Candle and How 
It Went Out." For one projected story her 
outHne runs: 

*' Show that there is punishment for our sins 
lying in the consequence of them, which no 
repentance can avert, or forgiveness condone, 
— which must be suffered to the uttermost. 
Make it clear that passive goodness is not 
enough. We must do something for human- 
ity. That a man who has no moral fibre or 
practical wisdom has a claim on us for help. 
For energy and good judgment are as much 
a gift as are eyes to see and ears to hear. 
The very lack of practical wisdom gives the 
one so lacking a special claim on our sym- 
pathies." 

Perhaps no one ever lived more in accord 
with this little gospel of human duty than 
did Mrs. Moulton, and this fact invests the 
note with a peculiar interest. 

The fiction of the day was little concerned 
with character-drawing or mental analysis, 
but was largely occupied wath a certain 
didactic embodiment of ideals of conduct. 
In such fiction a writer of Mrs. Moulton's 
genuine sincerity of temperament could not 
but show clearly her true attitude toward 



48 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

the deeper problems of life. The opening of 
one of her stories, "Margaret Grant," will 
illustrate this fact. 

*'The love of life, the love of children, the 
love of kin — these constrain all of us ; but 
it was another kind of love that constrained 
Margaret Grant. Curiously enough the first 
awakening came to her soul from a book 
written by an unbeliever, a book meant to 
bring Christianity to the final test of final 
obedience, and to prove its absurdity, thereby 
prove that to be a Christian as Christ taught, 
would overthrow the uses of the world, and 
uproot the whole system of things. 'Let the 
uses of the world go, and the system of things 
take care of itself,' Margaret Grant said when 
she laid the book down. 'This same religion 
of Christ is the best thing I know, and I vdW 
2:0 where it leads me.' And then she waited 
for the true Guide, that Holy Spirit which 
shall be given to every honest soul that seeks 
— waited for her special work, but not idly, 
since every day and all the days were the 
little offices of love that make life sweeter 
for whatever fellow-pilgrim comes in our 
way. 

" Margaret read to her half-blind grand- 
mother — taught the small boy that ran the 



POET AND FRIEND 49 

family errands to read — lielped her mother 
Avith the housekeeping, all on the lines of 
'godly George Herbert,' who wrote: 

Who sweeps a rcxjm as for Gcxl's laws, 
Makes that and the action fine. 

But all the time she felt that these were not 
the real work of her life, that work which 
was on its way." 

With the earnestness of spirit which is 
shown in this and which so continually 
sounded in her poems, Mrs. Moulton lived 
her rich life in the congenial atmosphere 
which surrounded her. Mrs. SpofFord, writ- 
ing of Mrs. Moulton from personal memory, 
says of her in 1860: 

*' She was now in her twenty-fifth year, fully 
launched upon the literary high-seas, con- 
tributing to Harper's, the Galaxy, and Scrib- 
ner's as they came into existence, and to 
the Young Folks, the Youth's Companion, 
and other periodicals for children. Her life 
seemed a fortunate one. She had a charming 
home in Boston where she met and entertained 
the most pleasant people; her housekeeping 
duties were fulfilled to a nicety, and no domes- 
tic detail neglected for all her industrious 
literarj' undertakings. A daughter had been 

4 



50 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

born to her, Florence, to whom ' Bedtime 
Stories ' were dedicated in some most tender 
and touching verses, and, somewhat later, a son 
whose little life was only numbered by days." 

Life was deepening and offering ever wider 
horizons. With Emily Dickinson she might 
have said of the complex interweaving of 
event, influence, and inspiration: 

Ah! the bewildering thread! 
The tapestries of Paradise 
So notelessly are made. 



CHAPTER III 
1860-1876 

But poets should 
Exert a double vision; should have eyes 
To see near things as comprehensively 
As if afar they took their point of sight; 
And distant things as intimately deep 
As if they touched them. . . . 
I do distrust the poet who discerns 
No character or glory in his time. 

Mrs. Browning. — Aurora Leigh. 

. . . There are divine things, well enveloped; 
I swear to you, there are divine things more beautiful than 
words can tell. — Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road. 

The morning skies were all aflame. — L. C. M. 

POETRY with Mrs. Moulton was a 
serious art and an object of earnest 
pursuit. It was not for mere pas- 
time that she had steeped herself, so to speak, 
in 

. . . The old melodious lays 
Which softly melt the ages through; 
The songs of Spenser's golden days, 
Arcadian Sidney's silver phrase; 

for in her poetic work she recorded her deepest 
convictions and her most intimate perceptions 
of the facts of Hfe. To her hfe was love: 



52 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

its essence was made up of the charm of 
noble and sincere friendships, of happy social 
intercourse, of sympathetic devotion. To this 
joy of love and friendship, there was in her 
mind opposed one sorrow — death, and not all 
the assurances of faith or philosophy could 
eliminate this dread, this all-pervading fear, 
that haunted her thoughts. In some way the 
sadness of death, as a parting, had been 
stamped on her impressionable nature, and 
it inevitably colored her outlook and made 
itself a controlling factor in her character. 
It took the form, however, of deepening her 
tenderness for every human relation and 
widening her charity for all human imperfec- 
tion. The vision of 

Cold hands folded over a still heart, 

touched her as it did ^Miittier, with the pity 
of humanity's common sorrow, and with him 
she could have said that such vision 

Swept all my pride away, and trembling I forgave. 

Writing in later years of Stephen Phillips 
she said : 

" Is it not, after all, the comprehension of 
love that above all else makes a poet immortal ? 
^^^lo thinks of Petrarch without remember- 
ing Laura, of Dante without the vision of 
Beatrice ?'* 



POET AND FRIEND 53 

" I have said that PhilHps is the poet of love 
and of pity. Many poets have uttered the 
passionate cries of love; but few, indeed, are 
those who have seen and expressed the piteous 
tragedy of life as he has done. He says in 
' Marpessa,' 

" The half of music, I have heard men say. 
Is to have grieved. 

And not only has Phillips grieved, but he 
has felt the grief of other men — listened to 
the wild, far wail which, one sometimes feels, 
must turn the very joy of heaven to sorrow." 

These words reveal much of her own 
nature. One critic said aptly: 

" She is penetrated with that terrible con- 
sciousness of the futility of the life which ends 
in the grave — that consciousness of per- 
sonal transitoriness which has haunted and 
oppressed so many passionate and despairing 
hearts. She knows that 'there is no name, 
with whatever emphasis of passionate love 
repeated, of which the echo is not faint at 
last.' And against this inevitable doom of 
humanity she rebels with all the energy of her 
nature." 

In her verse-loving girlhood she had de- 
lighted in the facile music and the obvious 
sentiment of Owen Meredith: his "Aux 



54 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Italiens," "Madame la Marquise," and "As- 
tarte" had delighted her fancy. As she 
developed, Browning's "Men and Women" 
held her captive; and she responded with 
eagerness to the new melodies of Swinburne. 
She was indeed wonderfully sensitive to the 
charm of any master who might arise ; yet her 
own work seemed little influenced by others. 
She remained always strikingly individual. 

In the decades between 1860 and 1880 Bos- 
ton was singularly rich in rare individualities, 
and among them Mrs. Moulton easily and 
naturally made her own place. She found 
the city not so greatly altered from the Boston 
of the forties of which Dr. Hale remarked 
that "the town was so small that practically 
everybody knew everybody. Lowell could 
discuss ^^'ith a partner in a dance the signifi- 
cance of the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven 
in comparison TN^ith the lessons of the Second 
or the Seventh, and another partner in the 
next quadrille would reconcile for him the 
conflict of freemll and foreknowledge." At 
this period James Freeman Clarke had 
founded his Church of the Disciples, of which 
he remained pastor until 1888; and in 1869 
Phillips Brooks became rector of Trinity. 
Lowell, in these years, was living at Elm- 
wood, and it was in 1869 that he recited at 



POET AND FRIEND 55 

Harvard Commencement his great Commem- 
oration Ode. The prayer on that occa- 
sion was made by Mr. Brooks, and of it 
President EHot said that "the spontaneous 
and intimate expression of Brooks' noble spirit 
convinced all Harvard men that a young 
prophet had risen up in Israel." 

Lydia Maria Child, the intimate friend of 
Wliittier, Sumner, Theodore Parker, and 
Governor Andrew, was then living, and in 
her book, "Looking Toward Sunset," quot- 
ing a poem of Mrs. Moulton's from some 
newspaper copy which had omitted the name 
of the author, Mrs. Child had altered one 
line better to suit her own cheerful fancy. 
On Mrs. Moulton's remonstrance Mrs. Child 
wrote her a characteristically lovely note, but 
ended by saying : "I hope you will let me keep 
the sunshine in it; the plates are now stereo- 
typed, and an alteration would be very expen- 
sive." Mrs. Moulton cordially assented to 
the added "sunshine," and an affectionate 
intercourse continued between them until 
Mrs. Child's death in 1880. 

These years of the third quarter of the 
Nineteenth Century were the great period of 
Webster, Choate, Everett, Channing, Sumner, 
and Winthrop. With the close of the Civil 
War national issues shaped themselves anew. 



m LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

It was a period of wonderful literary activity. 
Thomas Starr King, who came to Boston in 
1845, was a lecturer as well as a preacher 
of power and genius. Henry James, the 
elder, was publishing from time to time his 
philosophic essays, and to Mrs. Moulton, 
who was much attracted by his gentle lead- 
ings, he gave in generous measure his interest 
and encouragement. The Atlantic Monthly 
w^as founded in 1857 by Phillips and Sampson, 
the enterprising young publishers who, accord- 
ing to Dr. Hale, inaugurated the publishing 
business in Boston, and who were the pub- 
lishers of Mrs. Moulton's first book. With 
Lowell, the first editor of the Atlantic , Mrs. 
Moulton came in contact in the easy intimacy 
of the literary atmosphere. She heard with 
eager attention the well known lecture of 
George William Curtis on "Modern" Infi- 
delity" in 1860; and in the same year read 
with enthusiastic appreciation Hawthorne's 
"Marble Faun," from which she made copious 
extracts in her notebooks with sympathetic 
comments. The artistic and intellectual life 
of Boston in those days held much to call out 
her keenest interest. Mrs. Kemble gave her 
brilliant Shakespearian readings; Patti, a 
youthful prima donna, delighted lovers of 
opera; Charles Eliot Norton invited friends 



POET AND FRIEND 57 

to see his new art treasure, a picture by Ros- 
setti ; Agassiz was marking an epoch in scien- 
tific progress by his lectures. Interested by 
Professor Agassiz's efforts to found a museum, 
Mrs. Moulton wrote for the New York 
Tribune a special article on the subject; and 
this was acknowledged by Mrs. Agassiz. 

Mrs. Agassiz to Mrs. Moulton 

Thanks for the pleasant and appreciative 
article about the Agassiz Museum in the 
Tribune. It is a good word spoken in season. 
It is very charming, and so valuable just now, 
when the institution is in peril of its life. No 
doubt it will be of real service in our present 
difficulties by awakening sympathy and affec- 
tion in many people. Mr. Agassiz desires 
his best regards to you. 

Yours sincerely, 

Elizabeth Carey Agassiz. 

The intellectual and the social were closely 
blended in the Boston of the sixties and the 
seventies, and Mrs. Moulton was in the very 
midst of the most characteristically Bostonian 
circles. Her journals record how she went to 
a "great party" given by Mrs. William Claf- 
lin, whose husband was afterward governor; 
to Cambridge to a function given by the 



58 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Agassizs; to a reception at Dr. Alger's "to 
meet Rose Terry," later known as Rose Terry 
Cooke; to a dinner given in honor of Miss 
Emily Faithful ; to one intellectual gayety after 
another. She was one of the attractive iSgures 
at the delightful Sunday evening reunions 
given by Mr. and Mrs. Edwin P. Whipple. 
She notes in the journal that at a brilliant 
reception given by Mrs. John T. Sargent, so 
well known as the hostess of the famous 
Chestnut Street Radical Club, she had "a 
few golden moments" with Emerson, and a 
talk with the elder Henry James, with whom 
she was a favorite. 

In 1870 Mrs. Moulton became the Boston 
literary correspondent of the New York 
Tribune. This work developed under her 
care into one of much importance. Boston 
publishers sent to her all books of especial 
interest, and her comments upon them were 
of solid value. She recorded the brilliant 
meetings of the Chestnut Street Radical Club, 
and the intellectual news in general. These 
letters made a distinct success. Extracts 
from them were copied all over the United 
States, and they came to be looked upon as a 
sort of authorized report of what was doing in 
the intellectual capital of the country. They 
were given up only when the desire for for- 



POET AND FRIEND 59 

eign travel drew Mrs. Moulton so much 
abroad that she could no longer keep as 
closely in touch with current events as is 
necessary for a press correspondent. 

The Radical Club at that time was famed 
throughout the entire country, and it was re- 
garded as the very inner temple wherein the 
gods forged their thunderbolts. Only those 
w^ho bore the sacramental sign were supposed 
to pass its portals. Mrs. Moulton's accounts 
of these meetings were vivid and significant. 
As, for instance, the following : 

"The brightest sun of the season shone, and 
the balmiest airs prevailed, on the 21st of 
December, in honor of the meeting of the 
Radical Club under the hospitable roof of 
Mr. and Mrs. John T. Sargent in Chestnut 
street. Mrs. Howe was the essayist, and there 
w^as a brilliant gathering to hear her. David 
Wasson was there, and John Weiss, and 
Colonel Higginson, and Alcott, hoary embodi- 
ment of cool, clear thought. Mr. Linton, the 
celebrated engraver, John D'^aght of the 
Musical Journal, Mrs. Severance, the be- 
loved president of the New England Woman's 
Club, bonny Kate Field of the honest eyes and 
the piquant pen, Mrs. Cheney, Miss Peabody, 
and many others, distinguished in letters or art. 



60 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

'*To this goodly company Mrs. Howe read a 
brilliant essay on the subject of Polarity. She 
commenced by speaking of polarity as applied 
to matter, in a manner not too abstruse for the 
savants who surrounded her, though it was too 
philosophical and scholarly to receive the in- 
justice of being reported. The progress of 
polarity she found to give us the division of 
sex ; and Sex was the subject on which she in- 
tended to write when she commenced the es- 
say; but she found it, like all fundamental 
facts in nature, to be an idea with a history. In 
the pursuit of this history she encountered the 
master agency of Polarity, and found herself 
obliged to make that the primary idea, and 
consider sex as derived from it." 

Another letter, describing a meeting a few 
weeks later, gives a glimpse at some of the 
women who frequented the club: 

"There was Mrs. Severance, reminding one 
so much of an Indian summer day, so calm 
and peaceful is the sweet face that looks out 
at you from its framing of fair waving hair. 
Not far away was Julia Ward How^e, who 
some w^ay or other makes you think of the old 
fairy story of the girl who never opened her 
mouth but there fell down before her pearls and 
diamonds. That story is n't a fairy story, not 



POET AND FRIEND 61 

a bit of It. It is real, genuine truth, and Mrs. 
Howe is the girl grown up, and pearls of poetic 
fancy and diamonds of sparkling wit are the 
precious stones which fall from her lips. 
Lucy Stone was there, an attentive listener, 
looking the very picture of retiring womanli- 
ness in her Quaker-like simplicity of dress, 
and her pleasant face lighted \\ith interest and 
animation. Sitting by a table, busy with note- 
book and pencil, was Miss Peabody, the Sec- 
retary of the Club. She has a sparkling, ani- 
mated face, brimming over with kindness and 
good-^\ill ; she wins one strangely — you can't 
help being drawn to her. There 's a world of 
fun in the black eyes, and you feel sure she 
would appreciate the ridiculous sides of living 
as keenly as any one ever could." 

In still another letter are these thumb-nail 
sketches of persons well-known : 

*' As we drew near Chestnut street we saw a 
goodly number of pilgrims. . . . Nora Perry, 
with the golden hair, had journeyed up from 
Providence with a gull's feather in her hat 
and a glint of mischief in her glance; Celia 
Thaxter, whom the Atlantic naturally de- 
lights to honor, since from Atlantic surges she 
caught the rhythm of her life, sat intent ; Mr. 
Alcott beamed approval ; Professor Goodwin 



62 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

had come from Harvard; David A. Wasson 
had left his bonded ware-house a prey to 
smugglers; Rev. Dr. Bartol, who seems al- 
ways to dwell on the Mount of Vision; and 
Mr. Sanborn, who had sheathed his gUttering 
lance, sat near; Mrs. Howe, taking a little 
vacation from her labors for women, listened 
serenely; Miss Peabody had a good word to 
say for Aspasia; and Mrs. Cheney quoted 
AValter Savage Landor's opinion of her." 

A racy letter tells of the meeting when the 
Club discovered Darwin; another deals with 
the day when Mrs. Howe discoursed of "Moral 
Trigonometry"; and yet another of an occa- 
sion when the Rev. Samuel Longfellow was 
essayist, and all the pretty women had new 
bonnets. This allusion reminds one of a bit 
of witty verse when "Sherwood Bonner" (Mrs. 
McDowell) served up the Radical Club in a 
parody of Foe's "Raven," and described ]VIi*s. 
Moulton as, 

"A matron made for kisses, in the loveliest of dresses." 

The "Twelve Apostles of Heresy," as the 
transcendental thinkers were irreverently 
termed by the \\dts of the press, were about 
this time contributing to the enlightenment of 
the public by a series of Sunday afternoon 



POET AND FRIEND 63 

lectures. These lectures were held to repre- 
sent the most advanced thought of the day, 
and were delivered by such speakers as the 
Rev. O. B. Frothingham, Mary Grew (Wliit- 
tier's friend and a woman of equally culti- 
vated mind and lovely character), the Rev. 
John Weiss, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, T. W. 
Iligginson, and Mrs. Ednah D. Cheney. In 
one letter Mrs. Moulton writes thus : 

" As the coffin of Mahomet was suspended 
between heaven and earth, so is Mr. Wasson, 
who spoke last Sunday at Horticultural Hall, 
popularly supposed to be suspended between 
the heaven of Mr. Channing's serene faith and 
the depths of Mr. Abbot's audacious heresy. 
But if any one should infer from this state- 
ment that Mr. Wasson is a gentle medium, a 
man without boldness of speculation, or origi- 
nality of thought, he would find he had never 
in his life made so signal a mistake. Few men 
in America think so deeply as David A. Was- 
son, and fewer still have so many of the mate- 
rials for thought at their command. He has a 
presence of power, and is a handsome man, 
though prematurely gray, \snth an expansive 
forehead, where strong thoughts and calm 
judgment sit enthroned, and with eyes be- 
neath it which see very far indeed. His feat- 



61 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

ures are clearly cut, and lie looks as if lie felt, 
and felt passionately^ every word he utters, as 
he stands before an audience, his subject well 
in hand, and mth always twice as much to say 
as his hour will give space for, forced, there- 
fore, against his will, to choose and condense 
from his thronging thoughts. He spoke, in the 
Sunday afternoon course, on 'Jesus, Chris- 
tianity, and Modern Radicalism/ " 

John Weiss, the biographer of Theodore 
Parker, discoursed on one occasion on "The 
Heaven of Homer," and Mrs. Moulton com- 
mented : 

"Not the author of 'Gates Ajar,' listening 
in her pleasant dreams to heavenly pianos, 
ever drew half so near to the celestial regions, 
or looked into them with half so disillusion- 
ized gaze as the Grecian thought of the time of 
Homer." 

Of Mary Grew Mrs. Moulton gave this pen- 
picture : 

*' We saw a woman not young, save wath the 
youth of the immortals; not beautiful, save 
with the beauty of the spirit; but sweet and 
gentle, Tsdth a placid, earnest face. Her own 
faith is so assured that she appeals fearlessly to 
the faith of others ; her nature so religious that 
her religion seems a fact and not a question." 



POET AND FRIEND 65 

Another Boston institution of which Mrs. 
Moulton wrote in her Tribune letters was the 
New England Woman's Club. "Here," she 
declared, "Mrs. Howe reads essays and poems 
in advance of their publication; Abby May's 
wit flashes keen; Mrs. Cheney gives lovely 
talks on art; and Kate Field, with the voice 
which is music, reads her first lecture." She 
records how Emerson sends to the club-tea a 
poem; how ^Vhittier is sometimes a guest; 
how Miss Alcott tells an inimitable story; 
and how on May 23, 1870, was celebrated the 
birthday of Margaret Fuller, who for a quarter 
of a century had been beyond the count of 
space and time. On this occasion the Rev. 
James Freeman Clarke presided, and among 
the papers was a poem by Mrs. Howe of which 
Mrs. Moulton quotes the closing stanza : 

Fate dropt our Margaret 

Within the bitter sea, 
A pearl in golden splendor set 

For spirit majesty. 

It was in connection with a meeting of the 
Woman's Club that a guest invited from New 
York wrote for a journal of that city an account 
of the gathering in which is this description : 

" There too was Mrs. Louise Chandler 
Moulton, looking for all the world like one of 

5 



66 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

her own stories, tender and yet strong, the 
child-Hke curving of the mouth and chin in 
such contrast with the tender, almost sad eyes 
and well-developed brow covered with its 
masses of waving light hair. " 

Bret Harte, then in the height of his fame, 
wrote to Mrs. Moulton in regard to her 
Tribune letters, and told her that "it is 
woman's privilege to assert her capacity as a 
critic without sacrificing her charm as a 
woman." Many of her criticisms were richly 
worth preservation, did space allow. Of Walt 
Whitman she said: 

"With his theories I do not always agree; 
they seem to me fitter for a larger, more sin- 
cere, less complex time than ours; but there 
is no sham and no affectation, either in the 
man or in his verse. I could not tell how 
strong was the impression of sincerity and 
large-heartedness which he made on me." 

A new volume of poems by Lowell appeared, 
and in her comment she wrote: 

" Wordsworth was notably great in only a 
few poems, and Coleridge, and Keats, and 
Shelley come under the same limitations. Mr. 
Lowell is thus not alone in being at times for- 
saken by his good genius. ... If he does not 



POET AND FRIEND 67 

furnish us with a great amount of poetry of 
the highest order, it is the simple truth to say 
that in his best he has no rival, excepting 
Emerson, among American poets. When he 
is inspired, the key to nature and to man is in 
his hand, and he becomes the interpreter of 
both, commanding the secrets of one as truly 
as he interprets the interior life of the 
other." 

All this newspaper work did not interfere 
with the steady production of work less 
ephemeral. Poems and stories succeeded one 
another in almost unbroken succession. The 
fecundity of Mrs. Moulton's mind was by no 
means the least surprising of the good gifts 
with which nature had endowed her. In all 
the leading American magazines her name 
held a place recognized and familiar. What 
was apparently her first contribution to the 
Atlantic Monthly, a poem called "May- 
Flowers," caught the popular fancy and 
became a general favorite. The exquisite 
closing stanza was especially praised by 
those whose approbation was best worth win- 
ning: 

Tinted by mystical moonlight, 

Freshened by frosty dew. 
Till the fair, transparent blossoms 

To their pure perfection grew. 



68 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Longfellow commended her perfection of 
form and the lyric spontaneity of her verse 
and Whittier urged her to collect and publish 
her poems in a volume. 

Various letters of interest during these years 
from and to Mrs. Moulton are as follows: 

Mr. Whittier to Mrs. Moulton 

Amesbury, 3d, 8th month, 1870, 

Dear Mrs. Moulton: I am greatly 
disappointed in not meeting the benediction 
of thy face when I called last month; but I 
shall seek it again sometime. It just occurs to 
me that I may yet have the pleasure of seeing 
thee under my roof at Amesbury. We have 
so many friends in common that I feel as if I 
knew thee through them. 

How much I thank thee for thy kind note. 
It reaches me at a time when its generous 
appreciation is very welcome and grateful. 
Believe me very truly thy friend, 

John G. Whittier. 

William Winter to Mrs. Moulton 

Staten Island, N. Y. 
November 8, 1875. 

Dear Mrs. Moulton: I accept with 
pleasure and gratitude your very kind and 
sympathetic letter, — seeing beneath its deli- 



POET AND FRIEND 69 

cate and cordial words the sincere heart of a 
comrade in literature, and the regard of a 
nature kindred with my own. I wish I could 
think that your praise is deserved. It has 
often seemed to me of late that there is no 
cheer in my newspaper work. ... I am 
aware, however, that the sympathy of a bright 
mind and a tender heart and the approval of 
a delicate taste are not won without some sort 
of merit, and so I venture to find in your most 
genial and spontaneous letter a ray of en- 
couragement. You will scarcely know how 
grateful this is to me at this time. I thank you 
and I shall not forget that you were thoughtful 
and delicately kind. 

To-day I have received a copy of Stedman's 
poems, which I want to read again with great 
care. A man who has missed poetic fame 
himself may find great satisfaction in the suc- 
cess of his friend, and I do feel exceedingly 
glad in the recognition that has come to Sted- 
man. Your article on the book in the Tribune 
was excellent. 

Faithfully yours, 

William Winter. 



70 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Mrs. Moulton to Mr. Stedman 

" When you say it depends on me whether I 
will be looked upon as a real judicial authority 
by people of culture throughout the land, you 
fire me with ambition, but my springing 
flame is quenched by the realization that I am 
not cultured enough to rely on my judgment 
as a certainty, a finality, and that while I may 
feel that my intuitions are keen, they are apt 
to be warped by my strong emotions. I '11 
try. A very few persons are really my public, 
and I think how my letters will strike them, 
rather than how the world will receive them. 
I wonder how you w^ill like my review of ... .'^ 
Much of the book is 'splendidly null,' — per- 
fect enough in execution, but without that 
subtle something that sets the heart-chords 
quivering, and fills the eyes with tender dew ; 
that subtle minor chord of being, to which we 
are all kin, by virtue of our own pain. . . ." 

Mrs. Moulton to Mr. Stedman 

*' . . .1 am impatient to see your article on 
Browning. I am so struck by your calling him 
the greatest of love poets. I, too, have often 
thought something like that of him. If 'The 
Statue and the Bust' means anything, it 



POET AND FRIEND 71 

means that Browning thought the Duke and 
the Lady were fools to let 'I dare not' wait 
upon 'I would.' But, au contraire, I think 
*Pippa Passes' gives one the impression that 
he considers illegal love a great sin and the 
natural temptation to still greater sins. Don't 
you think so ? I wish I could have a talk on 
social questions with you, for I think your 
ideas are more fixed, more developed in 
thought and less chaotic than mine. ..." 

Mr. Whittier to Mrs. Moulton 

Amesbury, 11th month, 9th, 1874. 

My dear friend Louise Chandler Moul- 
ton : I thank thee from my heart for thy letter. 
I think some good angel must have prompted 
it, for it reached me when I needed it ; needed 
to know^ that my words had not been quite in 
vain. And to know that they have been com- 
fort or strength to thee is a cause for deep 
thankfulness. I do not put a very high esti- 
mate upon my writings, in a merely literary 
point of view, but it has been my earnest 
wish that they might at least help the world a 
little. I read thy notice of my book in the 
Tribune, in connection with Dr. Holmes' last 
volume, and while very grateful for thy praise, 
I was saddened by a feeling that I did not fully 
deserve it. In fact, I fear the world has 



72 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

treated me far better than I had any reason to 
expect; and I have been blessed with dear 
friends, whose love is about me like an at- 
mosphere. 

I have read the little poem enclosed in thy 
letter with a feeling of tenderest sympathy. 
God help us ! The loneliness of life, under 
even the best circumstances, becomes at 
times appalling to contemplate. We are all 
fearfully alone; no one human soul can fully 
know another, and an infinite sigh for sym- 
pathy is perpetually going up from the heart 
of humanity. But doubtless this very longing 
is the pledge and prophecy and guarantee of 
an immortal destination. Perfect content is 
stao'nation and ultimate death. 

a 

Wliy does thee not publish thy poems ? 
Everywhere I meet people who have been 
deeply moved by them. 

Thy letter dates from Pomfret, and I direct 
there to thee. I was in that place once so 
Ions ago that thee must have been a mere 
child. I rode over its rocky hills, bare in the 
chill December, with the late William H. Bur- 
leigh. I think it must be charming in summer 
and autumn. But something in thy poems 
and in thy letter leads me to infer that thy so- 
journ there has not been a happy one. Of 
course I do not speak of unalloyed happiness. 



rOET AND rUlEND 73 

for that can only come of entire exemption 
from sin and weakness. A passage which I 
have been reading this morning from Thomas 
a Kempis has so spoken to my heart that I 
venture to transcribe it: 

"What thou canst not amend in thyself or 
others, bear with patience until God or- 
daineth otherwise. When comfort is taken 
away do not presently despair. Stand with 
an even mind, resigned to the will of God, 
whatever may befall ; for after winter cometh 
the summer, after the dark night the day 
shineth, and after the storm cometh a great 
calm." 

Believe me always gratefully thy friend, 

John G. Whittier. 

Religious questions, with which Mrs. Moul- 
ton was always deeply concerned, come often 
into her letters. To Mr. Stedman she writes : 

" I have been curiously interested of late 
about a band of 'Sanctificationists,' who believe 
Christ meant it when He said, He can save 
from all sin. So they reason that, trusting in 
His own words, they can be saved from sin 
now and here. There is about them a peace 
and serenity, a sweetness and light, a joy in 
believing, that is unmistakable. They do live 



74 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

happier lives than others. I cannot beheve, 
somehow, in this * cleansing blood,' yet, see- 
ing these people, I feel that I lose a great 
deal by not believing in it. Oh, if one only 
knew the truth ! Reason rejects, it seems to 
me, the orthodox dogmas, but what is one 
to do with the argument of holier lives ? " 

Unconsciously Mrs. Moulton was echoing 
Emerson's lines. 

Nor knowest thou what argument 

Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. 

To the late sixties belongs a little incident 
which illustrates well Mrs. Moulton's atti- 
tude toward society. She was fond of social 
life, but it was in her interest always secon- 
dary to the intellectual. During a visit to 
New York, she was one evening just dressed 
for a festivity which she was to attend with 
her hostess, when the card of Horace Greeley 
was brought to her. She went down at once, 
and Mr. Greeley, who probably would not 
have noted any difference between a ball-gown 
and a neglige did not in the least appreciate 
that she was evidently dressed for a social 
function. When her hostess came to call 
her, Mrs. Moulton signalled that she was 
to be left, and passed the evening in con- 
versation so interesting and so animated 



POET AND FRIEND 75 

that Mr. Greeley remained until an unusu- 
ally late hour. Just as he was leaving he 
seemed to become dimly conscious that her 
costume was especially elaborate, and he 
inquired innocently: 

'*But were you not going somewhere 
to-night.?" 

"One does not go ^somewhere,'" she 
returned, "at the expense of missing a con- 
versation with Mr. Greeley." 

In 1873 Mrs. Moulton published a volume 
for young folk entitled "Bed-Time Stories." 
It was issued by Roberts Brothers, who from 
this time until the dissolution of the firm in 
1898, after the death of Mr. Niles, remained 
her publishers. The success of the book was 
immediate, and so great that the title was 
repeated in "More Bed-Time Stories," brought 
out in the year following. The first volume 
was dedicated to her daughter in these grace- 
ful lines: 

It is you that I see, my darling, 

On every page of this book. 
With your flowing golden tresses, 

And your wistful, wondering look. 

As you used to linger and listen 
To the "Bed- time Stories " I told. 

Till the sunset glory faded. 

And your hair was the only gold. 



76 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Will another as kindly critic 

So patiently hear them through? 

Will the many children care for 
The tales that I told to you? 

You smile, sweetheart, at my question; 

For answer your blue eyes shine: 
"We will please the rest if it may be. 

But the tales are — yours and mine." 



Of the second series of "Bed-Time Stories" 
George H. Ripley wrote in the Tribune: 

" The entire absence of all the visible signs 
of art in the composition of these delightful 
stories betrays a rare degree of artistic culture 
which knows how to conceal itself, or a singu- 
lar natural bent to graceful and picturesque 
expression. Perhaps both of these conditions 
best explain the secret of their felicitous con- 
struction, and their fidelity to nature. The 
best fruits of sweet womanly wisdom she 
deems not too good for the entertainment of 
the young souls with whom she cherishes 
such a cordial sympathy, and whom she so 
graciously attracts by the silvery music of 
her song, which lacks no quality of poetry 
but the external form. . . . They incul- 
cate no high-flown moral, but inspire the 
noblest sentiments. There is no preaching 
in their appeals, but they offer a perpetual 



POET AND FRIEND 77 

incentive to all that is lovely and good in 
character." 

An equal success attended the collection 
of stories for older readers which Mrs. 
Moulton brought out a year later under the 
title, "Some Women's Hearts." This con- 
tained all the stories written since the appear- 
ance of "My Third Book" which she thought 
worthy of preservation, and may be said to 
represent her best in this order of fiction. 
Professor Moses Coit Tyler said of them : 
"Mrs. Moulton has the incommunicable tact 
of the story-teller"; commented on their 
freedom from all padding, and commended 
their complete unity. The instinct for literary 
form which was so strikingly conspicuous in 
her verse showed itself in these stories by the 
excellence of arrangement and proportion, 
the sincerity and earnestness which made 
the tales vital. She had by this time out- 
grown the rather sentimental fashions of the 
gift-book period of American letters, and her 
conscientious and careful criticism of the work 
of others had resulted in a power of self- 
criticism which was admirable in its results. 
"My best reward," she said in after years, 
"has been the friendships that my slight w^ork 
has won for me"; but by the time she was 



78 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

forty she had won a place in American letters 
such as had been held by only two or three 
other women, and before her was the repu- 
tation which she was to win abroad, such as 
no woman of her country had ever attained 
before. 



CHAPTER IV 

1876-1880 

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, 
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be. 

Tennyson. 

The winds to music strange were set; 

The sunsets glowed with sudden flame. — L. C. M. 

MRS. MOULTON made her first visit 
to Europe in January, 1876. She 
remained abroad for nearly two years. 
From that date until the summer of 1907, 
inclusive, she passed every summer but two 
on the other side of the Atlantic. London 
became her second home. Her circle of 
friends, not only in England but on the Con- 
tinent, became very wide. Her poems were 
published in England, and she was accorded 
in London society a place of distinction such 
as had not Vjefore been given to any American 
woman of letters. She enjoyed her social 
opportunities; but she prized most the num- 
ber of sincere and interesting friendships 
which resulted from them. It is not difficult 



80 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

to understand how her charm and kindhness 
won those she met, or how her friendhness 
and sympathy endeared her to all who came 
to know her well. 

Mrs. Moulton's first glimpse of London 
was simply what could be had in a brief 
pause on her way to Paris. She was, how- 
ever, present in the House of Lords when 
the Queen opened Parliament in person for 
the first time after the death of the Prince 
Consort. She stayed but a few days in Paris, 
and then hastened on to Rome. Mrs. Harriet 
Prescott SpofTord thus describes this first 
visit to the Immortal City: 

" Paris over, came Rome, and twelve weeks 
of raptures and ruins, of churches and gal- 
leries, old palaces and almond-trees in flower, 
the light upon the Alban Hills, the kindly, 
gracious Roman society, all like a dream from 
which might come awaking. Certainly no 
one was ever made to feel the ancient spell, 
or to enjoy its beauty more than this sensi- 
tive, sympathetic, and impressible spirit. Stiff 
Protestant as she is, she was touched to tears 
by the benignant old pope's blessing ; and she 
abandoned herself to the carnival, as much 
a child as 'the noblest Roman of them 
all.'" 



POET AND FRIEND 81 

Mrs. Moulton entered into the artistic life 
of Rome with characteristic ardor. She knew 
many artists, and became an especial friend 
of Story's, a visitor at his studio, and an 
admirer of his sculpture. 

*' I had greatly liked many of his poems," 
she said later, " and I was curious to see if his 
poems in marble equalled them. I was more 
than charmed with his work; and I suppose 
I said something which revealed my enthusi- 
asm, for I remember the smile — half of 
pleasure, half of amusement — with which 
he looked at me. He said: 'You don't 
seem to feel quite as an old friend of mine 
from Boston felt, when he went through my 
studio, and, at least, I showed him the best 
I had. We are all vain, you know; and I 
suppose I expected a little praise, but my 
legal friend shook his head. "Ah, William," 
he said, "you might have been a great lawyer 
like your father ; you had it in you ; but you 
chose to stay on here and pinch mud"!' 
Another American sculptor whom Rome de- 
lighted to honor is Mr. Richard S. Greenough, 
whose * Circe' has more fascination for me 
than almost anything else in modern art; 
but my acquaintance with him came later. I 
had a letter of introduction to William and 

6 



82 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Mary Howitt from Whittier; they made me 
feel myself a welcome guest."" 

She was interested also in the work of a 
young sculptor who had then lately arrived 
in Rome, Franklin Simmons; and of him 
she told this incident : 

" Mr. Simmons had almost completed a 
statue, for which he had received an order 
from one of the States, had spent a great deal 
of time and money, when a conception came 
to him higher than his original idea. Without 
hesitation he sacrificed his time, his labor, 
and his marble — no small loss this — and 
began again. It was an act of simple hero- 
ism, of which not every one would have been 
capable; and there is little doubt that a man 
who unites to his talent a criticism so unspar- 
ing, and a spirit so conscientious, will do 
work well worthy the attention of the world." 

Mrs. Moulton's real introduction to London 
did not come this year, but in the summer of 
1877, when a breakfast was given in her honor 
by Lord Houghton (Richard Monckton Milnes) , 
at which the guests included Browning, Swin- 
burne, George Eliot, Jean Ingelow, Gustave 
Dore, and others of only less distinction. 
The breakfast was followed by a reception 



POET AND FRIEND 83 

at which, in the society phrase, the guest of 
honor met everybody. 

Of this breakfast an amusing reminiscence 
has been given by Mrs. Moulton herself: 

** Shortly after I came into the room. Lord 
Houghton, whose voice was very low, brought 
a gentleman up to me whose name I failed 
to hear. My fellow-guest had a pleasant 
face, and was dressed in gray; he sat down 
beside me, and talked in a lively way on 
everyday topics until Lord Houghton came to 
take me in to table. Opposite to us sat Miss 
Milnes, now Lady Fitzgerald, between two 
gentlemen, one of whom was the man in gray. 
Presently Lord Houghton asked me if I 
thought Browning looked like his pictures. 
* Browning.?' I asked. 'Where is he.?' 
*Why, there, sitting beside my daughter,' 
he replied. But, as there were two gentlemen 
sitting beside Miss Milnes, I sat during the 
remainder of the breakfast with a divided 
mind, wondering which of these two men 
was Browning. After going back to the 
drawing-room my friend in ^ray again came 
and sat beside me, so I plucked up courage 
and said, 'I understand Mr. Bi'owning is 
here; will you kindly tell me which he is.?' 
He looked half puzzled, half amused, for a 



84 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

moment; then he called out to some one 
standing near, 'Look here, Mrs. Moulton 
wants to know which one of us is Browning. 
Cest moil' he added with a gay gesture; 
and this is how my friendship with the author 
of 'Pippa Passes' began." 

This introduction may be said to have 
"placed" Mrs. Moulton in Enghsh hterary 
society, and there was hardly a person of 
intellectual distinction in London whom she 
did not meet. She came to know the Rossettis, 
WiUiam Sharp, Theodore Watts (later known 
as Watts-Dunton), Herbert E. Clarke, Mrs. 
W. K. Clifford, A. Mary F. Robinson (after- 
ward Mme. Darmesteter) , Olive Schreiner, 
Lewis Morris, William Bell Scott, the Hon. 
Roden Noel, Iza Duff us Hardy, Aubrey de 
Vere, the Marstons, father and son, and in 
short almost every Avriter worth knowing. 
She came, indeed, to belong almost as com- 
pletely to the London hterary world as to 
that of America. 

Philip Bourke Marston, the blind poet, 
whose friend and biographer she in time be- 
came, she first met on the first day of July of 
this year. She has recorded the meeting: 

" It was just six weeks before his twenty- 
sixth birthday. He was talL slight, and, in 



POET AND FRIEND 85 

spite of his blindness, graceful. lie seemed 
to me young-looking even for his twenty-six 
years. lie had a noble and beautiful fore- 
head. His brown eyes were perfect in shape, 
and even in color, save for a dimness like a 
white mist that obscure<l the |)upil, but which 
you perceived only when you were quite near 
to him. His hair and beard were dark 
brown, with warm glints of chestnut; and the 
color came and went in his cheeks as in those 
of a sensitive girl. His face was singularly 
refined, but his lips were full and pleasure- 
loving, and suggested dumbly how cruel must 
be the limitations of blindness to a nature hun- 
gry for love and for beauty. I had been greatly 
interested, before seeing him, in his poems, 
and to meet him was a memoral)le delight. 

" He and the sister, who was his inseparable 
companion, soon became my close friends, 
and with them both this friendship lasted 
till the end." 

The poetry of Swinburne had for her a 
fascination from the first, and she was attracted 
also by the personality of the poet. Writing 
an article upon a new volume of his, she 
submitted the copy to him before publishing 
it in the Athenoeum. His acknowledgment 
was as follows : 



86 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Mr. Swinburne to Mrs. Moulton 

Decembek 19, 1877. 

Dear Madame: I am sincerely obliged 
for the kindness and courtesy to which I am 
indebted for the sight of the MS. herewith 
returned. Of course my only feeling of hesi- 
tation as to the terms in which I ought to 
acknowledge and answer the application which 
accompanied it arises merely from a sense of 
delicacy in seeming to accept, if not thereby 
to endorse, an estimate altogether too flatter- 
ing to the self-esteem of its object. 

But even at the risk of vanity or self-com- 
placency, I will simply express my gratitude 
for your too favourable opinion, and my grate- 
ful sense of the delicacy and thoughtfulness 
which has permitted me a sight of the yet 
unprinted pages which convey it. 
Yours sincerely, 
Algernon Charles Swinburne. 

Leaving London in August, 1876, Mrs. 
Moulton went with Kate Field to visit Law- 
rence Hutton and his mother, who had a 
house for the summer in Scotland. In Sep- 
tember, in company with Dr. Westland Mars- 
ton, his son and daughter, and Miss Hardy, 
she made a visit to Etretat. The place and 



POET AND FRIEND 87 

the company made a combination altogether 
deHghtful, An entry in her diary for this 
time, of which the date is merely "Mid- 
night of September 1," records her enthusi- 
asm. 

" I want to remember this evening which 
has been so beautiful. I had worked all day 
to six o'clock dinner, after which I sat and 
talked awhile with Cecily and Iza, and then 
took a long moonlight walk with them and 
Dr. Marston. I think I never saw such a 
wonderful sky. The blue of it was so intensely 
blue and great masses of white clouds, hur- 
ried and driven on by the wind, met each 
other and retreated and put on all sorts of 
fantastic shapes, while among them the moon 
walked, visible sometimes, and at others 
hiding her pale face behind some veiled 
prophet of a cloud, who was mocking the 
fair night with the gloom of his presence. 
I never saw such grand effects. 

"We climbed a long hill, and from thence 
we looked down on little Etretat lying below 
us, with the lights in its many windows, and 
the sea tossing beyond it white with spray and 
with moonlight. The trees were quivering 
at the whispers of a low wind, and still above 
all the clouds held strange conclave, keeping 



88 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

up their swift march and counter-march. 
All this time Dr. Marston talked as we saun- 
tered on, and talked superbly. I think the 
electricity in the air inspired him. He talked 
of the soul's destiny, of immortality, and 
expressed, with matchless eloquence, that 
strong-winged faith which bears him on 
toward that end that wdll be, he feels sure, 
the new life's beginning. From time to time 
he interrupted himself to point out some- 
thing that we might not else have seen, — 
some w^onderful phantom of moonlight, some 
cottage-lamp shining at the end of a long lane, 
some Rembrandt contrast of light and shade. 
"We walked far, but I knew no weariness. 
I could have walked on forever watching 
that strange and fitful sky, and listening to 
such talk as I have seldom heard. Here is 
an affluent poet, who affords to scatter his 
riches broadcast, and does not save them all 
for his printed pages. We went home at 
last and sat for a while in Dr. Marston's 
house, and then Philip and Cecily and I went 
down to the long terrace overlooking the sea, 
and sat for an hour or more to watch the 
moonlight on the breaking waves. How happy 
we were, that little while ! We talked of the 
fitful clouds, the wild, hurrying sea, the white, 
sweet moon. Then something brought back 



POET AND FRIEND 89 

to me visions of the white statues at Rome, 
and I tried to show them how fair these old 
gods stood in my memory. Ah ! shall I ever for- 
get this so lovely night ? The strange, change- 
ful, wind-swept sky, the waves swollen with 
the passion of yesterday's storm, marching in 
like a strong army upon the shore and over- 
whelming it. Behind us the casino, with its 
many lights, and down there between the 
moonlight and the sea, we three who did not 
know each other three months ago but hold 
each other so closely now. 

"Nothing can ever take from me the fitful 
splendor, the wild rhythm, the divine mystery 
of this happy night. I can always close my 
eyes and see again sea and sky and dear faces ; 
hear again the waves break on this wild coast 
of Normandy, with the passion of their 
immortal pain and longing." 

This stay in Etretat was further commemo- 
rated in her poem of that title. Dr. Marston, 
too, felt the spell of the place and company, 
and addressed to her this sonnet : 

THE EMBALMING OF A DAY. 

Tuesday: September 11: 1877. To Louise. 

A Day hath Lived! So let him fall asleep. 
A Day is Dead — Days are not born again. 
Only his Spirit shall for Us remain 



90 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Who found Him dear: His Hours in Balm to steep 
Of all sweet Thoughts that may in Freshness keep 

The beauty of a Day forever slain — 

Of Wishes, for the bitter Herbs of Pain: 
Of Looks that meet and smile, though Hearts may weep. 
So shall our Night to come not wholly prove 

An Egypt's Feast, where bids the Silent Guest 
"In Joy remember Death." — "Remember Love 

In Death," thy dead Day breathes from Breast to Breast. 
Embalm Him thus. Heart's Love, that he may lie 
Un tombed and unforgotten, though he die. 

The succeeding winter Mrs. Moulton passed 
in Paris. Here as in London she met many 
of the most interesting people of the day. 
With Stephane Mallarme especially she formed 
a close friendship, and through him she came 
to know the chief men of the group called at 
that time the '''Decadents''' of which he was 
the leader. Mallarme was at this time pro- 
fessor of English in a French college, and 
his use of that language afforded Mrs. Moul- 
ton some amusement. "He always addressed 
me in the third person," she related, *'and he 
made three syllables of 'themselves.' He 
spoke of useless things as 'unuseful.' He was, 
however, a great comfort and pleasure to me, 
and I saw a great deal of him and of his wife 
that winter. I used to dine with them at their 
famous Tuesdays, and meet the adoring 
throng that came in after dinner. Often he 
and Madame Mallarme would saunter with 



POET AND FRIEND 91 

me about the streets of Paris. It was then 
that I first made acquaintance with the 
French dolls, — those wonderful creations 
which can bow and courtesy and speak, and 
are so much better than humans that they al- 
ways do the thing they should. Whenever 
we came to a window where one of these 
lovely creatures awaited us, I used to insist 
upon stopping to make her dollship's ac- 
quaintance, until I fear the Mallarmes really 
believed that these dolls were the most allur- 
ing things in life to me. But the winter, — 
crowded for me with the deepest interests and 
delights in meeting the noted men of letters 
and many of the greatest artists, and of study- 
ing that new movement in art. Impressionism, 
which was destined to be so. revolutionary in 
its influence, — at last this wonderful winter 
came to an end, and I was about to cross the 
Channel once more. Full of kindly regrets 
came Monsieur and Madame Mallarme to pay 
me a parting call, 'We have wished,' be- 
gan the poet, mustering his best English in 
compliment to the occasion, 'Madame and I 
have wished to make to Madame Moulton a 
souvenir for the good-bye, and we have 
thought much, we have considered the pref- 
erence beautiful of Madame, so refined; and 
we do reflect that as Madame is pleased to 



92 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

so graciously the dolls of Paris like, we have 
washed to a doll present her. Will Madame 
do us the pleasure great to come out and 
choose with us a doll, tres jolie, that may have 
the pleasure to please her ? '" 

It would be a pleasure to record that Mrs. 
Moulton accepted the gift. The doll pre- 
sented by the leader of the Symbolists would 
have been not only historic, but it might have 
been regarded as signif}ang in the language of 
symbolism things unutterable; but she could 
only say: "Oh, no; please. I should be 
laughed at. Please let it be something else.'* 
And the guests retired pensive, to return next 
day with a handsome Japanese cabinet as 
their offering. "And I have pined ever since," 
Mrs. Moulton added smilingly, when she told 
the story, "for the Mallarme doll that might 
have been mine." 

In 1877 the Macmillans brought out Mrs. 
Moulton's first volume of poems under the 
title "Swallow Flights," the name being taken 
from Tennyson's well known lines : 

Short swallow-flights of song, that dip 
Their wings in tears, and skim away. 

The American edition, which followed soon 
after from the house of Roberts Brothers, 



POET AND FRIEND 93 

was entitled simply "Poems." The success 
of the book was a surprise to the author. Pro- 
fessor William Minto wrote in the Examiner: 

*' We do not, indeed, know where to find, 
among the works of English poetesses, the 
same self-controlled fulness of expression with 
the same depth and tenderness of simple feel- 
ing. . . . 'One Dread' might have been 
penned by Sir Philip Sidney." 

The Athenceum, always chary of over- 
praise, declared : 

*' It is not too much to say of these poems that 
they exhibit delicate and rare beauty, marked 
originality, and perfection of style. What is 
still better, they impress us with a sense of 
subtle and vivid imagination, and that spon- 
taneous feeling which is the essence of lyrical 
poetry. ... A poem called 'The House of 
Death' is a fine example of the writer's best 
style. It paints briefly, but with ghostly 
fidelity, the doomed house, which stands 
blind and voiceless amid the light and laughter 
of summer. The lines which we print in 
italics show a depth of suggestion and a 
power of epithet which it would be difficult to 
surpass. 



94 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 



"THE HOUSE OF DEATH 

*' Not a hand has hfted the latchet, 
Since she went out of the door, — 
No footsteps shall cross the threshold. 
Since she can come in no more. 

"There is rust upon locks and hinges, 
And mould and blight on the walls, 
And silence faints in the chambers, 
And darkness ivaits in the halls, — 

" Waits, as all things have waited, 

Since she went, that day of spring. 
Borne in her pallid splendour, 
To dwell in the Court of the King; 

" With lilies on brow and bosom. 
With robes of silken sheen. 
And her wonderful frozen beauty 
The lilies and silk between. 



" The bird^ make insolent mime 

Where the sunshine riots outside; 
And the winds are merry and wanton, 
With the summer's pomp and pride. 

" But into this desolate mansion. 
Where Love has closed the door, 
Nor sunshine nor summer shall enter. 
Since she can come in no more." 

Philip Bourke Marston wrote a long re- 
view of the volume in The Academy, London, 
in the course of which he admirably sum- 



POET AND FRIEND 95 

marized the merits of the work when lie 
said : 

"The distinguishing quahties of these poems 
are extreme directness and concentration 
of utterance, unvarying liarmony between 
thought and expression, and a happy free- 
dom from that costly elaboration of style so 
much in vogue. . . . Yet, while thus free 
from elaboration, Mrs. Moulton's style dis- 
plays rare felicity of epithet. . . . The poeti- 
cal faculty of the writer is in no way more 
strongly evinced than by the subtlety and 
suggestiveness of her ideas.'* 

The reviewers of note on both sides of the 
Atlantic were unanimous in their praise. In 
a time of aesthetic imitation she came as an 
absolutely natural singer. She gave the 
effect of the sudden note of a thrush heard 
through a chorus of mocking-birds and pip- 
ing bullfinches. She was able to put herself 
into her work and yet to keep her poetry free 
from self-consciousness; and to be at once 
spontaneous and impassioned is given to few 
writers of verse. When such a power belongs 
to an author the verse becomes poetry. 

Mrs. Moulton had already come to regard 
Robert Browning as, in her own phrase, 
*'king of contemporary poets." She sent to 



96 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

him a copy of "Swallow Flights," with a 
timid, graceful note asking for his generosity. 
In his acknowledgment he said : 

Mr. Browning to Mrs. Moulton 

19 Warwick Crescent, W. 
February 24, '78. 

My dear Mrs. Moulton: Thank you 
for the copy of the poems. They need no 
generosity. ... I close it only when needs I 
must at page the last, with music in my ears 
and flowers before my eyes, and not without 
thoughts across the brain. Pray continue 
your "flights," and be assured of the sympa- 
thetic observation of 

Yours truly, 

Robert Browning. 

In acknowledgment of a copy of "In the 
Garden of Dreams " William Winter wrote : 

Mr. Winter to Mrs. Moulton 

"It is a beautiful book, Louise, and the spirit 
of it is tender, dreamlike and sorrowful. . . . 
The pathos of it affects me strongly. Life 
appeals more strongly to you than the pag- 
eantry. There is more fancy in your poems 
and more alacrity and variety of thought, but 
the quality that impresses me is feeling. I 






Ami /^ h^ ^n^h^ ^ f ^ ^^^ "^ "^ 



Facsimile ov a Lk-iteh kho.m R.jbkrt Brow.vivg 



POET AND FRIEND 97 

am not a critic, but somehow I must feel that 
I know a good thing when 1 see it, and I am 
sure that no one but a true artist in poetry 
could have written tliose stanzas called 'Now 
and Then.' The music has been running in 
my mind for days and days, 

"And had you loved me then, my dear. 

I think you are very kind to remember me 
and to send such a lovely offering to me at 
Christmas. God bless you ! and may this 
new year be happy for you, and the harbinger 
of many happier years to follow." 

Some years later the Scotch critic. Pro- 
fessor Meiklejolm, sent to Mrs. Moulton a 
series of comments which he had made while 
reading "Swallow Flights," "in the intervals 
of that fearful kind of business called Ex- 
amination;" and some of these may be 
(juoted before the book is passed for other 
matters. 

"The word * waiting' in the line 

'White moons made beautiful the waiting night,' 

is full of emotional and imaginative memory. 
"In *A Painted Fan' the Hne 

'Tlie soft, south wind of memory blows,' 

7 



98 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

is another instance of a perfect poetical 
thought, perfectly expressed. 

"Two Unes of an unforgettable beauty are 

'The flowers and love stole sweetness from the sun; 
The short, sweet lives of summer things are done.' 

"And a line Shelley himself might have 
been proud to own is 

'No bird-note quivers on the frosty air.' 
*' The lines 



'He must, who would give life. 
Be lord of death:' 



and 

'Shall a life which found no sun 
In death find God?' 

express musically a mystic thought. 

"The sonnet 'In Time to Come' is one of 
astonishing crescendo. The lines 

'And you sit silent in the silent place, . . . 
You will be weary then for the dead days, 
And mindful of their sweet and bitter ways, 
Though passion into memory shall have grown.' 

*' This is very poetry of very poetry. You 
must look for your poetic brethren among the 
noble lyrists of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries. Your insight, your subtlety, your 
delicacy, your music, are hardly matched. 



POET AND FRIEND 99 

and certainly not surpassed, by Herri ck or 
Campion or Carew or Herbert or Vaughan." 

The success of this first volume of poems 
naturally contributed not a little toward es- 
tablishing Mrs. Moulton firmly in the place 
she had won already in the literary society of 
London. Among other celebrities she met at 
this time Lady Wilde, who, as the poet 
"Speranza" in the Dublin Nation in 1848 had 
been a figure really heroic, and who was by no 
means disinclined to magnify her own virtues. 
Taking Mrs. Moulton to task as a poet of 
mere emotion, Lady Wilde said to her re- 
provingly: "You 're full of your ow^n feelin's, 
me dear ; but when I was young and your age, 
too, only the Woes of Nations got utterance 
in me pomes." 

Mrs. Moulton heard Cardinal Newman 
and Mr. Spurgeon. Of them she wrote: 

" You see straight into his [Newman's] mind 
and heart. You feel the glow of his thought, 
the action of his conscience ; you feel the in- 
herent excellence of the man you are dealing 
with. 

*' Mr. Spurgeon's style is admirable — strong, 
vigorous Saxon, short sentences, simple in 
structure, and full of earnestness. His first 
prayer was brief and earnest, and extremely 



100 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

simple in phraseology. It gave one a sense of 
intimacy with God, in which was no irrever- 
ence. The sermon commenced at 12 m., and 
lasted three-quarters of an hour. I thought 
John Bunyan might have preached just such 
a discourse." 

To her great regret she missed meeting 
Tennyson. Long afterward she wrote : 

" I never met Tennyson, but I just lost him 
by an accident. I shall never get over the re- 
gret of it. I had been invited to various places 
where he was expected as a guest; but you 
know how elusive he was, even his best friends 
could get at him but rarely. One day I had 
gone out for some idiotic shopping — shop- 
ping is always idiotic to me — and when I 
came back at late dinner time Lord Houghton 
met me with the question, * Where have you 
been ? I 've been sending messengers all over 
the city for you. I got hold of Tennyson, and 
he waited for half an hour to see you.' The 
fates were never kind enough to bring me 
within the poet's range again." 

On the death of Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman 
in 1878, Mrs. Moulton wrote of her in the 
London Athenoeum. The admiration of Poe 
which exists in England, the romance of his 



POET AND FRIEND 101 

relations vnth the "Helen" of his most beau- 
tiful poem, made the article especially timely; 
and from her acquaintance and her warm 
friendship for Mrs. Wliitman, Mrs. Moulton 
was able to speak wdth authority. Her de- 
scription of the personality of Mrs. Whitman 
is noteworthy: 

" There was a singular attraction in the per- 
sonal presence of this woman. The rooms 
where she lived habitually were full of her. 
They were dim, shadowy rooms, rich in tone, 
crowded with objects of interest, packed with 
the memorials of a lifetime of friendships; 
but she herself was always more interesting 
than her surroundings. Wlien she died, her 
soft brown hair was scarcely touched with 
gray. Her voice retained to the last its music, 
vibrating at seventy-five ^dth the sympathetic 
cadences of her youth. She was singularly 
shy. I remember that when I persuaded her 
to repeat to me one of her poems, she always 
insisted on going behind me. She could not 
bring herself to confront eye and ear at the 
same time." 

The letters of Mrs. Whitman to Mrs. Moul- 
ton have been published in the biography of 
the former, but the following is so unusual — 
"the lady's gentle vexation at having been 



102 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

made out younger than she was," commented 
the recipient of the letter, "is so exceptional 
among women as to be amusing " — that it 
may be quoted. 

Mrs. Whitman to Mrs. Moulton 

" I will speak of one or two points suggested 
by the expression, 'true to her early love for 
Edgar Poe.' Now I was first seen by Edgar 
Poe in the summer of 1845, when I was forty- 
two years old, and my earliest introduction to 
him was in 1848, when I was forty-five. You 
will see, therefore, that it was rather a late 
than an early love. I was born on the 19th of 
January, 1803 — Edgar Poe was born on the 
19th of January, 1809, being six years, to a 
day, my junior. Soon after the last edition of 
Griswold's 'Female Poets' was issued, I 
happened to be turning over some of the new 
Christmas books at a bookseller's, when I 
unwittingly opened a copy of that work, at 
the very page where an alert, enterprising 
woman sits perched on a marble pedestal. 
Glancing at the foot of the page, 1 read, in 
blank amazement, my own name. Turning 
to the preceding page, I found that the lady in 
question was born in 1813 ! I began seriously 
to doubt my own identity. I had never, to 
the best of my recollection, been modelled in 



POET AND FRIEND 103 

plaster; I had never been 'interviewed' on 
the dehcate point of age. Everybody knows 
that a lady's age after forty is proverbially un- 
certain ; still it is as well to draw a line some- 
where, and so, dear, if you should be called 
upon to write my obituary, and should con- 
sent to do so, here is a faithful transcript from 
the family Bible : — 

*' * Sarah Helen Power, born Jan. 19 — 10 
o'clock p. M., 1803.' 

" That was the same year that gave birth to 
Emerson." 

Mr. Longfellow wrote to thank Mrs. 
Moulton for her paper on Mrs. Whitman, 
and at no great interval he wrote again in 
acknowledgment of an article upon his own 
poetry also in the Athenceum. 

Mr. Longfellow to Mrs. Moulton 

Cambridge, May 17, 1879. 

Dear Mrs. Moulton: For your kind 
words in the AthenoBum, how shall I thank you ? 
Much, certainly, and often, — but more and 
more for your kind remembrance, and the 
pleasant hours we passed together before your 
departure. 

... A charming country place in England 
is the thatched-roofed Inn at Rowsley in 



104 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Derbyshire, one mile from Haddon Hall. Go 
there. And do not forget to write to me. 
Truly yours, 

Henry W. Longfellow. 

In October, 1879, Mr. Chandler died, and 
Mrs. Moulton's grief was sincere and deep. 
It was the beginning of the breaking of the 
relations which had been closest in her life. 
Her love for her father had been always ten- 
der and fine, and both her journal and her let- 
ters show how much she felt the loss. 

She was in America at the time of her 
father's death, and in correspondence with 
many of the friends she had made abroad. 
Among her Christmas gifts this year came a 
sonnet from Dr. Westland Marston. 

To L. C. M. 

Take thou, as symbol of thyself, this rose 
Which blooms in our world's winter. 

Dank and prone 
Lie rose-stems now, by sleety gales o'erthrown. 
But still thy flower in hall and chamber glows, 
Fed, like thee, not by airs the garden knows, 
But by a subtler climate. Thus the zone 
Of Summer binds the seasons, one to one, 
And links the beam which dawns with that which goes. 

Hail, Human Rose! — With heavenly fires enshrined. 
Still cheat worn hearts anew in fond surprise 
To faith in Youth's dear, dissipated skies; 




Lucirs Lk.mi Ki. Chandi.kh, Mhs. Moi i.ton's Fathkw 

Fii'je 1()4 



POET AND FRIEND 105 

Soul-flower, still shed thine influence! 
Sun nor wind 
Control not thee; thy life thy charm supplies 
And makes the beauty which it does not find. 

W. M. 
Christmas Eve. 



CHAPTER V 

1880-1890 

The busy shuttle comes and goes 

Across the rhymes, and deftly weaves 
A tissue out of autumn leaves, 

"With here a thistle, there a rose. 

With art and patience thus is made 

The poet's perfect Cloth of Gold; 

When woven so, nor earth nor mould 
Nor time can make its colors fade. ^T. B. Aldrich. 

And others came. — Desires and Adorations; 

Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies; 
Splendors and Glooms and glimmering Incantations 

Of hopes and fears and twilight fantasies. — Shellet. 

I see the Gleaming Gates and toward them press. — L. C. M. 

R. and Mrs. Moulton when they first 
set up their household gods estab- 
lished themselves on Beacon Hill. A 
few years later, however, a new part of the 
city was developed at the South End, and 
popular favor turned in that direction. The 
broad streets and squares with trees and 
turf were quiet and English-looking, and 




POET AND FRIEND 107 

although fickle fashion has in later years 
forsaken the region, it remains singularly 
attractive. Here Mr. Moulton became the 
owner of a house, and for the remainder of 
their lives he and his wife made this their 
home. 

The dw^elling was a four-story brick house, 
the front windows looking out upon the 
greenery of a little park in the centre of the 
square. At one end of the place was a stone 
church, defined against the sky and especially 
lovely with the red of sunset behind it; and 
an old-world atmosphere of retirement and 
leisure always pervaded the region. In Rut- 
land Square, No. 28 came to be well known 
to every Bostonian and to whomever among 
visitors was interested in things literary. It 
was the most cosmopolitan centre of social 
life in the city; and to it famous visitors to 
this country were almost sure to find their 
way. For thirty years Mrs. Moulton's weekly 
receptions through the winter were notable. 

The drawing-room and library where groups 
of charming and famous people assembled 
were such as to remain pictured in the memory 
of the visitor. They were fairly furnished, 
so to speak, with the tributes of friends. 
There were water-colors from Rollin Tilton 
of Rome; a vigorous sketch of a famous 



108 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

group of trees at Bordighera by Charles Caryl 
Coleman; a number of signed photographs 
from Vedder; sketches in clay from Green- 
ough, Ezekiel, and Robert Barrett Brown- 
ing; a group of water-colors, illustrating Mrs. 
Moulton's poem, "Come Back, Dear Days," 
by Winthrop Pierce, — one of these showing 
a brilliant sunrise, while underneath was the 
line, 

"The morning skies were all aflame;" 

and another, revealing a group of shadow- 
faces, illustrated the line, 

"I see your gentle ghosts arise." 

There were signed photographs of Robert 
Barrett Browning's "Dryope," a gift from 
the artist; a painting of singular beauty 
from the artist, Signor Vertunni, of Rome; 
and from William Ordway Partridge three 
sculptures, — the figure of a child in Carrara 
marble, a head tinted like old ivory, and a 
portrait bust of Edward Everett Hale, a 
speaking likeness. There was that wonderful 
drawing by Vedder, "The Cup of Death" 
(from the Rubaiyat), which the artist had 
given to Mrs. Moulton in memory of her 
sonnet on the theme, the opening lines of 
which are: 




ai 



?5 



POET AND FRIEND 109 

She bends her lovely head to taste thy draught, 
O thou stern "Angel of the Darker Cup," 
With thee to-night in the dim shades to sup. 

Where all they be who from that cup have quaffed. 

And among the rare books was a copy of 
Stephane Mallarme's translation of Poe's 
"Raven," with illustrations by Manet, the 
work being the combined gift to Mrs. Moulton 
of the poet-translator and the artist. 

Many were the rare books in autograph 
copies given to Mrs. Moulton by her friends 
abroad — copies presented by Lord Hough- 
ton, George Eliot, Tennyson, Jean Ingelow, 
Christina Rossetti, Oswald Crawfurd, George 
Meredith, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur 
O'Shaughnessy, and several, too, which were 
dedicated to her, — the "Wind Voices" of 
Philip Bourke Marston, inscribed: "To 
Louise Chandler Moulton, true poet and 
true friend," and another by Herbert L. 
Clarke of London. The rooms were mag- 
netic mth charming associations. 

A correspondent from a leading New York 
daily, commissioned to write of Mrs. Moulton's 
home, described her drawing-room as 

"Long, high, and altogether spacious and 
dignified. A library opening from the rear 
increases the apparent length of the apart- 



110 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

ment, so that it is a veritable salon; the 
furnishings are of simple elegance in color 
and design, and the whole scheme of decora- 
tion quiet and not ultra-modern. 

"But in this attractive room are more treas- 
ures than one would dream of at first glance. 
The fine paintings that are scattered here, 
there, and everywhere, are all of them veritable 
works of art, presented to Mrs. Moulton by 
their painters; the etchings are autograph 
copies from some of the best masters of 
Europe. Almost every article of decoration, 
it would seem, has a history. The books that 
have overflowed from the dim recesses of the 
library are mostly presentation copies in 
beautiful bindings, with many a well-turned 
phrase on their fly leaves written by authors 
we all know and love. 

"There could be no better guide through 
all this treasure-house of suggestive material 
than Mrs. Moulton herself. Without ques- 
tion she knows more English people of note 
than does any other living American. As 
she spreads out before the delighted caller 
her remarkable collection of presentation pho- 
tographs, she intersperses the exhibit with 
brilliant ofi^-hand descriptions of their originals 
— the sort of word-painting that bookmen are 
eager to hear in connection with their literary 



POET AND FRIEND 111 

idols. It is the real Swinburne she brings to 
the mind's eye, with his extraordinary personal 
appearance and his weird manners; the real 
William Watson, profoundly in earnest and 
varying in moods; the real George Egerton, 
with her intensity and devotion to the higher 
rights of womankind ; the real Thomas Hardy 
and George Meredith and Anthony Hope, 
and the whole band of British authors, big 
and little, whom she marshals in review and 
dissects with unerring perception and the 
keenest of wit. Anecdotes of all these per- 
sonages flow from her tongue with a prodi- 
gality that makes one long for the art of 
shorthand to preserve them." 

From this home in the early eighties the 
daughter of the house was married to 
Mr. William Henry Schaefer, of Charleston, 
South Carolina. In her daughter's removal 
to that Southern city, Mrs. Moulton's life 
found an extension of interests. She made 
frequent visits to Charleston before what 
now came to be her annual spring sailings to 
Europe. In her later years Mrs. Moulton 
and her daughter and son-in-law often trav- 
elled together, though Mrs. Moulton's enjoy- 
ment centred itself more and more, as the 
years went by, in her extensive and sympathetic 



112 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

social life. Always was she pre-eminently 
the poet and the friend ; and travel became to 
her the means by which she arrived at her 
desired haven, rather than was indulged in 
for its own sake. Yet the lovely bits of 
description which abound in her writings 
show that she journeyed with the poet's eye; 
as, for instance, this on leaving Rome: 

"The deep blue Itahan sky seemed warm 
with love and life, the fountains tossed high 
their white spray and flashed in the sunshine. 
Peasants were milking their goats at the foot 
of the Spanish Steps. Flower-girls had their 
arms full of fresh flowers, with the dew still 
on them, loading the air with fragrance." 

Or this of Florence: 

"I never cross the Ponte Vecchio, or Jewel- 
lers' Bridge, in Florence, without thinking 
of Longfellow's noble sonnet, and quoting to 
myself : 

* Taddeo Gaddi built me, — I am old.' 

Nor could I ever approach the superb eques- 
trian statue of the Grand Duke Ferdinand 
without thinking of Browning's *The Statue 
and the Bust.' 'The passionate pale lady's 
face' wrought by Lucca della Robbia no 
longer 'watches it from the square.'" 



POET AND FRIEND 113 

Just before her sailing in 1880 came this 
note from Mr. Longfellow: 

Mr. Longjelloiv to Mrs. Moulton 

Craigie House, Cambridge, March 2, 1880. 

Dear Mrs. Moulton : . . . Yes, surely 
I will give you a letter to Lowell. I will 
bring it to you as soon as I am able to leave 
the house. ... It was a great pleasure to 
meet you at Mrs. Ole Bull's, but I want to 
hear more about your visits to England, and 
whom you saw, and what you did. What is 
it ? Is it the greater freedom one feels in a 
foreign country where no Evening Transcript 
takes note of one's outgoings and incomings ? 
I can't attempt to explain it. Please don't 
get expatriated. 

Ah, no, life is not all cathedrals and ruined 
castles, and other theatrical properties of the 
Old World. It is not all scenery, and within 
the four walls of home life is much the same 
everywhere. 

Truly yours, 

Henry W. Longfellow. 

Of cathedrals and ruins she saw much, 
but people always interested her more than 
any inanimate things. She records her talks 
with one and another of the intellectual 

8 



114 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

friends whom she met now in one city and 
now in another. She records, for instance, a 
talk with Miss Anne Hampton Brewster, 
so long the Roman correspondent of the 
Boston Advertiser, the topic being the poetry 
of Swinburne. "She regarded his 'Laus 
Veneris ' as the most fearful testimony against 
evil she ever read,'* Mrs. Moulton wrote; 
"and in 'Hesperia,' that glorious, beautiful, 
poetic cry, she declared could be found the 
way to the poet's meaning." 

She visited the Roman studios, and in that 
of Mr. Story saw the busts of Robert and 
Elizabeth Browning, and others, and the 
statue of " Medea," just then completed. She 
wrote later that the concluding ten lines of 
Swinburne's "Anactoria" "express the char- 
acter of Story's * Sappho.' It is as if the 
poem had been written for the statue, or the 
statue was modelled to interpret the poem." 

One result of her travels was the publica- 
tion in 1881 of a charming little collection of 
papers called "Random Rambles." The 
book contained short chapters about Rome 
and Paris and Genoa and Florence and Venice 
and Edinburgh and the London parks. A 
reviewer characterized the volume aptly when 
he said : 



POET AND FRIEND 115 

'* Mrs. Moulton seems to have gathered up 
the poetic threads of European Hfe which 
were too fine for other visitors to see or get, 
to have caught and given expression to the 
impalpable aromas of the various places she 
visited, so that the reader feels a certain at- 
mospheric charm it is impossible to describe." 

The little book was deservedly successful. 
Mrs. Moulton's writings seemed always to 
conform to the standard set by Mr. Aldrich, 
who once said to her: "Literature ought to 
warm the heart; not chill it." Her readers 
were conscious without fail of a current of 
sympathetic humanity. 

It was this quality no less than her real 
critical power, or perhaps even more than 
that, which made authors so grateful for her 
reviews of their work. In reference to a 
neswpaper letter in which she had spoken 
of Wilkie Collins, the novelist wrote to her: 

Mr. Collins to Mrs. Moulton 

" 90 Gloucesteh Place, Portman Square, W. 
March 30, 1880. 

" I have read your kind letter with much 
pleasure. I know the 'general reader' by 
experience as my best friend and ally. . . . 
"When I return to the charge I shall wTite 



116 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

with redoubled resolution if I feel that I have 
the great public with me, as I had then (for 
example) in the case of 'The New Magdalen.' 
*Her Married Life,' in the second part, will 
be essentially happy. But the husband and 
wife — the world whose unchristian prejudices 
and law they set at defiance will slowly under- 
mine their happiness, and will, I fear, make 
the close of the story a sad one." 

The letter referred to was one of a long 
series which Mrs. Moulton contributed to 
the New York Independent. Many of these 
papers were of marked literary value. A typ- 
ical one was upon Mme. Desbordes-Valmore, 
founded upon Sainte Beuve's memoir of that 
interesting and unhappy French poet. Mrs. 
Moulton characterizes Mme. Desbordes-Val- 
more as "the sad, sweet nightingale among 
the singers of France, and as a tender, elegiac 
poet" without equal. She closes with these 
words : 

"Mme. Valmore passed away in July of 
1859. 'We shall not die,' she had said. In 
that hour a gate was opened to some strange 
land of light, some new dawning of glory, 
and the holy saints, to whose fellowship she 
belonged, received her into the very peace of 
God." 



POET AND FRIEND 117 

Mrs. Moulton's witty essay on "The Gospel 
of Good Gowns" was one of this series in 
The Independent, and a fine paper of hers 
on Thoreau was widely quoted. 

In a department which for some months 
she conducted under the title, "Our Society," 
in a periodical called Our Continent, Mrs. 
Moulton discoursed on manners, morals, and 
other problems connected! with the conduct 
of life. The incalculable influence of the 
gentle, refined ideals that she persuasively 
imaged was a signal factor in the progress of 
life among the younger readers. Mrs. Moul- 
ton's ideal of the importance of manner was 
that of Tennyson's as expressed in his lines, — 

For manners are not idle, but the fruit 
Of loyal nature and of noble mind. 

Many of these papers are included in Mrs. 
Moulton's book called "Ourselves and Our 
Neighbors," published in 1887. In one of 
these on "The Gospel of Charm" she says: 

"So many new gospels are being preached, 
and that so strenuously, to the girls and 
women of the twentieth century, that I have 
wondered if there might not be a danger lest 
the Gospel of Charm should be neglected. 
And yet to my mind there are few teachings 
more important. I would advocate no charm 



118 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

that was insincere, none that would lessen the 
happiness of any other woman; but the fact 
remains that the slightest act may be done 
with a graciousness that warms the day, or 
with a hard indifference that almost repels 
us from goodness itself. It is possible to 
buy a newspaper or pay a car-fare in such 
wise as to make newsboy or car-conductor 
feel for the moment that he is in a friendly 
world." 

Certainly the ''gospel of charm" never had 
a more signal illustration than in her own 
attitude toward those with whom she came 
in contact. 

In one of the chapters, "The Wish to Rise," 
she writes: 

"The moment a strong desire for social 
advancement seizes on a man or woman it 
commences to undermine the very founda- 
tions of character, and great shall be the fall 
thereof. 'To keep up appearances,* 'to make 
a show ' — one of these sentences is only more 
vulgar than the other. The important thing 
is not to appear, but to be. It is true, and pity 
'tis, 'tis true, that many people are shut out 
by limited and narrow fortunes from the 
society to which by right of taste and culture 
they should belong. But nothing proves 



POET AND FRIEND :(19 

more surely that they do not belong there 
than any attempt to force their way there by 
means of shams. ... If our steady purpose 
is, each one, to raise himself, his own mind 
and spirit, to the highest standard possible for 
him, he will not only be too busy to pursue 
shams and shadows, but he will be secure of 
perpetual good society, since he will be 
always with himself. . . . Nothing more surely 
indicates the parvenu than boastfulness. The 
man w^ho brings in the name of some fine 
acquaintance at every turn of the conversation 
is almost certain to be one whose acquaintance 
w^ith any one who is fine is of yesterday. 
Really well-placed people do not need to ad- 
vertise their connections in this manner. . . . 
It is essentially vulgar to push — to run after 
great people, or to affect a style of living beyond 
one's means — it is not only vulgar but con- 
temptible to change one's friends with one's 
bettering fortunes." 

The book had a merited success, and even 
yet is in demand. 

In the early eighties an enterprising pub- 
lisher conceived the idea of a book on "Famous 
Women," in which those exceptional beings 
should write of each other. To Mrs. Moul- 
ton's pen fell Louisa M. Alcott, and a request 



no LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

on her part for inforDiation brought to her 
the following characteristic note, dated Janu- 
ary, 1883 : 

Miss Alcott to Mrs. Moulton 

*'I have not the least objection to your writing 
a sketch of L. M. A. I shall feel quite com- 
fortable in your hands. I have little material 
to give you ; but in ' Little Women ' you will 
find the various stages of my career and 
experience. Don't forget to mention that I 
don't like lion hunters, that I don't serve 
autophotos and biographies to the hundreds 
of boys and girls who ask, and that I heartily 
endorse Dr. Holmes' views on this subject.'* 

To this volume the sketch of Mrs. Moulton 
herself was written by the graceful pen of Mrs. 
Harriet Prescott Spofford, who wrote with the 
sympathetic appreciation of the poet and 
close friend. 

While on a visit to Spain in 1883, — and 
"Spain," she wrote, "is a word to conjure 
with," — Mrs. Moulton made the acquaintance 
of Oswald Crawfurd the novelist, when he 
was in the diplomatic service. From his letters 
then and afterward might be taken many 
interesting passages, of which the following 
may serve as examples: 



POET AND FRIEND 121 

*'There is another writer whose acquaintance 
I have made, through his books, I mean, for 
such interesting creatures as authors seldom 
come to Portugal. We have to put up with 
royalties, rich tourists, and wine merchants. 
For me, the writers, the manipulators of ideas, 
the shapers of them into human utterance, 
are the important people of the age, as well as 
the most agreeable to meet, in their books or 
in life. This particularly pleasant one I have 
just met is Frank Stockton. You will laugh 
at the idea of my discovering what other peo- 
ple knew long ago, but it happens that I have 
only just read his books. The three notes 
that strike me in him are his perfect originality, 
his literary dexterity, and his new and delicate 
humor. I cannot say how he delighted me. " 

"We are going to give you Andrew Lang 
to take you in [at the dinner] on Friday, and 
on the other side you will have either James 
Bryce or Mr. Chapman, the 'enterprising 
young publisher' mentioned by Dickens. 
Regarding Lang, I know no man who does so 
many things so very well, — journalist, philolo- 
gist, mythological researcher, — and to the 
front in all these characters. To almost any 
one but yourself I should call him a poet also. 
His face is very refined and beautiful. " 



n^ LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

"I have been reading your poems again. 
You are as true a lyric artist as Landor or 
Herri ck. I admire your sonnets, — they have 
a particular charm for me, and I am glad 
that you do not despise the old English form 
with the two last lines in rhyme. Shakespeare's, 
indeed, are so. I am almost inclined to think 
that for our rhymeless language, for an ear 
not attuned to the Italian perception for 
delicate rhyme of sounds, the strong empha- 
sis on the ending couplet is right and good." 

"I honestly like and admire the genius of 
Howells. I like his novels immensely, but 
his theories not at all." 

The brief records in Mrs. Moulton's journal 
in these days suggest her crowded life of social 
enjoyment and literary work. On New Year's 
day of 1885 she notes having been the night 
before at a party at Mrs. Ole Bull's; and on 
that day she goes to a reception at the Howard 
Ticknors' ; friends come to her in the evening. 
January second falls on a Friday, and as she 
is about to visit her daughter and son-in-law 
in Charleston, this is her last reception for the 
season. Naturally, it is a very full one, and 
while she does not chronicle the list of her 
guests, it is constructively easy to fancy that 
among them may have been Dr. Holmes, 




LorisE CuAvni.En Moultok 

Page. 122 



POET AND FRIEND 123 

Professor Horsford, the poet Aldrich and his 
lovely wife; Dean Hodges, always one of her 
most dearly esteemed friends ; Mrs. Ole Bull, 
the Wliipples, Oscar Fay Adams, Professor 
Lane of Harvard, Arlo Bates, in whose work, 
even then, she was taking great delight ; Mrs. 
Kate Gannett Wells, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, 
or her daughter, Mrs. Maud Howe Elliott; 
Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford; Mrs. Julius 
Eichberg and her brilliant daughter, Mrs. 
Anna Eichberg Eang (now Mrs. John Lane 
of London) , — these and many others of her 
Boston circle who were habitues of her 
"Fridays," and seldom, indeed, was one of 
these receptions without some guests of spe- 
cial distinction who were visiting Boston. On 
one occasion it was Mr. and Mrs. Edmund 
Gosse of London ; or again, Matthew Arnold ; 
W. D. Howells was to be met there when in 
Boston; and not infrequently Colonel T. W. 
Higginson; Helen Hunt, w^hom Mrs. Moul- 
ton had long known; Mary Wilkins (now 
Mrs. Freeman), always cordially welcomed; 
Mrs. Clement Waters, the art writer; Presi- 
dent Alice Freeman of Wellesley College 
(later Mrs. George Herbert Palmer) ; and 
Governor and Mrs. Claflin, at w^hose home 
Whittier was usually a guest during his so- 
journs in Boston, were among the familiar 



124 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

guests. Mr. Whittier could seldom be in- 
duced to appear at any large reception; but 
from Mrs. Moulton's early youth he had been 
one of her nearer friends, and his calls were 
usually for her alone. 

Bliss Carman and Edgar Fawcett from 
New York were sometimes to be met in Mrs. 
Moulton's drawing-room; and there were 
also a group of Boston artists, — Arthur 
Foote who had set to music several of Mrs. 
Moultons^ lyrics ; B. J. Lang and his daughter, 
who had also set some of Mrs. Moulton's songs ; 
the painters, I. M. Gaugengigl, Winthrop 
Pierce, John Enneking ; Miss Porter and Miss 
Clarke, the editors of Poet-Lore ; Caroline 
Ticknor, the young author whose work con- 
tinued the literary traditions of her famous 
name; and often some of the clergy of Bos- 
ton, — the Rev. Dr. Charles Gordon Ames, 
with Mrs. Ames, both of whom were among 
Mrs. Moulton's most dearly-prized friends; 
occasionally Rev. Dr. Edward Everett Hale, 
and Bishop Phillips Brooks ; in a later decade. 
Rev. Dr. E. Winchester Donald, who suc- 
ceeded Phillips Brooks as rector of Trinity; 
Rev. Bernard Carpenter, a brother of the Lord 
Bishop of Ripon; and beside the throngs of 
representative people who, at one time or an- 
other through some thirty years, were to be 



POET AND FRIEND 125 

met at Mrs. Moulton's, the socially unknown 
guest received from the hostess the same cor- 
dial welcome. Her sympathies had little 
relation to social standing. No praise of the 
critics ever gave her more happiness than did 
a letter from a stranger in the West, written by 
a young girl who had for years been unable 
to move from her bed, telling of the blessed 
ministry of a poem by Mrs. Moulton, of which 
the first stanza runs : 

We lay us down to sleep, 

And leave to God the rest, 
Whether to wake and weep 

Or wake no more be best. 

A book of Mr. Stedman's of which he sent 
to Mrs. Moulton a copy bore on its fly-leaf the 
inscription : 

My life-long, loyalist friend, 
My sister in life and song. 

In the winter of 1885 the journal notes a 
visit to Mrs. Schaefer in Charleston, where 
amid all the festivities she finds time to send 
"four short stories and a poem" to various 
editors. On her way North she visited Wash- 
ington, where dinners and receptions were 
given to her in private and in diplomatic 
circles. Then she went on to New York, and 
before sailing for Europe met Monsignor Capel 



126 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

at dinner, lunched with the Lawrence Bar- 
retts, attended Mr. Barrett's performance of 
"The Blot in the 'Scutcheon," which she 
found a "wonderful piece of acting," and at 
last sailed, as usual lavishly rernembered with 
flowers and graceful tokens. 

In Venice this year Mrs. Moulton wrote the 
charming pseudo-triolet, 

IN VENICE ONCE. 

In Venice once they lived and loved — 
Fair women with their red gold hair — 

Their twinkling feet to music moved, 

In Venice where they lived and loved, 

And all Philosophy disproved. 

While hope was young and life was fair. 

In Venice where they lived and loved. 

It is interesting to feel in this a far sugges- 
tion of Browning's "A Toccata of Galuppi's," 
because so seldom does any echo of her con- 
temporaries strike through Mrs. Moulton's 
verse. 

With friends Mrs. Moulton visited Capri, 
Sorrento, Amalfi, Castellamare, Pompeii, and 
then went on to Rome. Here she passed the 
morning of her fiftieth birthday in the gal- 
leries of the Vatican. Friends made a jesta of 
her birthday, mth a birthday-cake and gifts; 
and she dined with the Storys, to go on later 
to one of Sir Moses Ezekiel's notable musi- 



POET AND FRIEND 127 

cales at his study in the Baths of Diocletian. 
"The most picturesque of studios," she wrote, 
"and a most cosmopoHtan company, — at 
least fifty ladies and gentlemen, representing 
every civilized race. . . . All languages were 
spoken. Pascarella, the Italian poet, recited. 
. . . Professor Lunardi, of the Vatican library, 
who has his Dante and Ariosto by heart, was 
talking Latin to an American Catholic clergy- 
man." Of this studio she gives a picturesque 
description : 

"Suspended from the lofty ceiling was a 
hanging basket of flowers encircled by a score 
of lights; while around the walls hundreds 
of candles in antique sconces were burning, 
throwing fitful gleams over marble busts and 
groups of statuary. The frescoes on the walls 
are fragments of the walls of Diocletian, and 
the floor is covered with rich antique tiles 
fifteen hundred years old. Eight elephants' 
heads hold the candles that light the studio on 
ordinary occasions. Two colossal forms claim 
the attention of the visitor ; one, the picture of 
a herald, drawn by Sir. Moses, holds in his 
right hand the shield of art ; the other is the 
figure of Welcome, holding in one hand a glass 
of wine, while the other rests upon a shield. 
The most striking and interesting work in the 



128 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

studio is the group of Homer. The figure of 
the poet is of heroic size, and he is represented 
sitting on the seashore, reciting the IHad, 
and beating time with his hands; even in his 
bhndness, his face wears an expression that 
seems to be looking into the future and down 
through the ages of time. At his feet is seated 
his guide, a youth with Egyptian features, 
who accompanies Homer with strokes on the 
lyre-" 

In the studio was also a bronze bust of 
Liszt, the only one for which he ever sat, and 
which Sir Moses modelled at the Villa d'Este. 

After Rome came Florence, where Mrs. 
Moulton was the guest of Mrs. Clara Erskine 
Clement Waters, who had taken a villa in that 
city. Among other people whom Mrs. Moul- 
ton met at this time was "Ouida," who un- 
bent from her accustomed stiffness to Ameri- 
cans, and, yielding to the charm of her guest, 
displayed her house and pets in a manner 
which for her was almost without precedent. 
Mrs. Waters gave a brilliant reception in her 
honor ; she was the guest of the Princess Kolt- 
zoff Massalsky (Dora d'lstria) , and she visited 
Professor Fiske at the Villa Landor, where 
she was "charmed by his wonderful library" 
with its collections of the most notable edi- 



POET AND FRIEND 129 

tions of Dante and Petrarca; and she was 
entertained by Professor and Madame Villari. 

From Florence she went to Aix-les-Bains. 
Then she passed to England. 

In London she saw constantly almost 
everybody of note in literary circles. Her 
diary records visits to or from or meetings with 
the Lord Bishop of Winchester, Mrs. Bloom- 
field Moore, Lord Morley, Thomas Hardy, 
the Bishop of Ripon, Mr. Verschoyle of the 
Fortnightly Review, William Sharp, Frederick 
Wedmore, Sir Frederic and Lady Pollock, 
Dr. Furnival, and others, for a list too long to 
give entire. Her journal shows how full were 
her days. 

"Mrs. Campbell-Praed came to lunch; a 
lot of callers in the afternoon, among them 
the Verschoyles, the Francillons, Mrs. Cashel- 
Hoey, Mrs. Fred Chapman, and Mrs. Anna 
Lea Merritt. 

"Went to the Chapmans' to luncheon; met 
George Meredith. . . . Meredith is a very 
brilliant and agreeable man. 

"Francillon to luncheon. A lovely letter 
from Oswald Crawfurd, praising Andrew 
Lang. . . . Went with Mrs. Marable to see 
Mrs. Sutherland Orr; a very charming 
person. " 

9 



130 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Herbert E. Clarke, whom in a letter to Pro- 
fessor Bates she described as "a wonderfully 
charming and fine fellow," accompanied a 
volume of his poems which he sent to her with 
these graceful dedicatory verses: 

TO LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 

(With "Verses on the Hillside.") 

Go forth, O little flower of song, 

To her who found you fair; 
After a winter black as night, 
I plucked you when spring's smile brought light. 
And April's winds were blithe and strong. 

And Hope was in the air. 

Poor stray of Autumn left to Spring, 

I send you forth to be 
'Twixt us a pledge of happier hours; 
Yea, though she hath far fairer flowers 
Always at hand for gathering. 

Go forth undoubtingly. 

For thou hast gained a happy meed. 

And wert thou weed or worse. 
With her praise for a light above. 
Many should find thee fair, and love 
Though not for thine own sake indeed, — 

But her sake, O my verse. 

Be weed or flower, and live or die. 

To me thou art more dear 
Than all thy sister flowerets are, 
O herald of the single star 
That rose above the lowering sky 

Of my most hopeless year. 



POET AND FRIEND 131 

One particularly delightful day was that on 
which Mrs. Moulton attended a garden-party 
at Lambeth Palace as the guest of the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury and Mrs. Benson. An- 
other of the red-letter days was an afternoon 
with the Holman Hunts, in their rambling, 
fascinating house, filled with artistic treasures, 
when on the lawn a Hungarian orchestra 
played their national airs. Among the guests 
were Lewis Morris, Edwin Arnold, Hall Caine, 
Theodore Watts-Dunton, and many others 
who bore names well known. The diary re- 
cords, too, a studio-reception given by Felix 
Moscheles, a coaching trip to Virginia Water; 
and so on for a round of gay doings which 
make it amazing that all this time Mrs. Moul- 
ton continued her literary work. 

In the autumn Mrs. Moulton journeyed to 
Carlsbad, and there "made Lady Ashburton's 
acquaintance in the morning and sat up in 
the wood with her for a couple of hours." The 
acquaintance ripened into a warm friendship 
between the two, and Mrs. Moulton was often 
a guest at Lady Ashburton's place, Kent 
House, Knightsbridge. The sonnet "One 
Afternoon" is the memory of this first meeting 
written at Carlsbad a year after. 

On her return to America in the autumn, 
Mrs. Moulton went to Pomfret to visit her 



132 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

mother. While there she heard from Miss 
Guiney of the death of a young poet, James 
Berry Bensel, of whom she wrote to Os- 
car Fay Adams as follows : 

Mrs. Moulton to Mr. Adams 

28 Rutland Square, Sunday. 

My dear Friend: Your letter just re- 
ceived draws my very heart out in sympathy. 
I wish you were here, that I could tell you all 
the feelings that it brought, for I know what 
it is to lose my dearest friend. Louise Guiney 
said to me when she came Friday afternoon: 
"I have something to tell you. Bensel is 
dead. His brother has written me." And I 
was not myself all the afternoon. I could not 
put aside the thought that pleaded for my 
tears. And I grieved that I had not yet writ- 
ten to him about his book. I find such fine 
things in it. Come back and let us grieve for 
him together, — not that I grieve as you do 
who loved him so, but I do understand all you 
feel, and I felt his death very unusually, my- 
self. I wish, oh, how I wish, we could call him 
back to life, and give him health, and the 
strength to work, and more favorable con- 
ditions. But we do not know but that he may 
now be rejoicing somewhere in a great gain, 
beyond our vision. He has gone where our 



POET AND FRIEND 133 

vision cannot find or our fancy follow him; 

but he must either be better off in a new birth 

or else so deeply at rest that no pain can 

pierce him where he is. Good-bye and God 

bless you. ^r i. a i 

•^ Yours most truly, 

Louise Chandler Moulton. 

The Boston winters were full always with 
social and literary interests. The relations of 
Mrs. Moulton to the writers of her circle were 
indicated when on her sailing in the spring of 
one of the late eighties a post-bag was arranged 
which was delivered to her in mid-ocean. The 
idea originated with Miss Marian Boyd Allen, 
and among the contents were a manuscript 
book of poems for every day by Bliss Carman ; 
poems by Clinton Scollard, Arlo Bates, Willis 
Boyd Allen, Minot J. Savage, Celia Thaxter, 
the Rev. Bernard Carpenter, Gertrude Hall, 
Mary Elizabeth Blake, and Hezekiah Butter- 
worth; a silver vinaigrette from Professor 
James Mills Pierce; a book from Mrs. Clara 
Erskine Clement Waters ; two charming draw- 
ings from Winthrop Pierce ; with notes from 
Nora Perry, Colonel T. W. Higginson, and 
others. Miss Guiney addressed as her "Chief 
Emigrant and Trans-Atlantic Gadder, Most 
Ingenious Poet, and Queen of Hearts." Col- 
onel Higginson wrote: 



134 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

T. W. Higginson to Mrs. Moulton 

Cambridge, May 3, 1887. 

Dear Friend : I gladly join with others in 
this mid-ocean post-bag. I hope you will take 
your instalments of friendship in as many 
successive days. Few American women, — 
perhaps none, — have succeeded in estab- 
lishing such a pleasant intermedian position 
before English and American literature as 
have you, and as the ocean does not limit 
your circle of friends, it seems very proper 
that we on this side should stretch our hands 
to you across it. As one of your oldest and 
best friends, I wish you not only "many happy 
returns," but one, at least, in the autumn. 
Ever cordially, 

T. W. Higginson. 

On the other side of the Atlantic Philip 
Bourke Marston and his friend William 
Sharp greeted her return to London in 
three sonnets. 

Philip Bourke Marston to Mrs. Moulton 

UNDESCRIED. — TO L. C. M. 

When from her world, new world, she sailed away. 
Right out into the sea-winds and the sea, 
Did no foreshadowing of good to be 

Surprise my heart? That memorable day 



POET AND FRIEND 135 

Did I as usual rise, think, do, and say 

As on a day of no import to me? 

Did hope awake no least low melodv? 
Send forth no spell my wandering steps to stay? 

Oh, could our souls catch music of the things 
From some lone height of being undescried, 

Then had I heard the song the sea-wind sings 
The waves; and through the strain of storm and tide, — 

As soft as sleep and pure as lovely springs, — 
Her voice wherein all sweetnesses abide. 

William Sharp to Mrs. Moulton 
ANTICIPATED FRIENDSHIP 

Friend of my friend! as yet to me unknown. 

Shall we twain meeting meet and care no more? 

Already thou hast left thy native shore. 
And to thine ears the laughter and the moan 
Of the strange sea by night and day unknown. 

Its thunder and its music and its roar; 

A few days hence the journey will be o'er. 
And I shall know if hopes have likewise flown. 
As one hears by the fire a father tell 

His eager child some tales of fairy land, 
Where no grief is and no funereal bell. 

But thronging joys and many a happy band; 
So do I hope fulfillment will be well. 

And not scant grace, with cold, indifferent hand. 

AFTER MEETING 

Friend of my friend, the looked-for day has come. 

And we have met: to me, at least, a day 
Memorable: no hopes have flown away. 

Bad fears lie broken, stricken henceforth dumb: 
In the thronged room, and in the ceaseless hum 

Of many voices, I heard one voice say 



136 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

A few brief words, — but words that did convey 

A subtle breath of friendship, as in some 
Few scattered leaves the rose still gives her scent. 

Thy hand has been in mine, and I this night 
Have seen thine eyes reach answer eloquent 

To unseen questions winged for eager flight. 
And when, at last, our Philip and I went, 

I knew that I had won a fresh delight. 

The following letter from Mr. Sharp ex- 
plains itself in this cluster of greetings : 

William Sharp to Philip Bourke Marston 

19 Albert Street, Regent's Park. 

Dear Philip : I could n't be bothered going 
out anywhere, as you suggested, and an hour 
or two ago I was able to complete a second 
sonnet for the two on "Anticipated Friend- 
ship" addressed to Mrs. Moulton. I told 
you how much I liked her, and what a relief 
it was to find my hopes not disappointed. In 
reading these sonnets (at least, the second 
one) remember the dolorous condition I am 
in, and have mercy on all short-comings that 
therein abound ; and, please, if you think the 
spirit of thankfulness in them not sufficient to 
overbalance all deficiencies, throw them in the 
fire without showing them to their unconscious 
inspirer, and thus earn the future gratitude 

r? 

^ Your loving friend, 

William Sharp. 



POET AND FRIEND 137 

In February of 1887 Philip Bourke Marston 
died. He bequeathed to Mrs. Moulton his 
books and manuscripts, and many auto- 
graphs of great interest and value. Among 
them was the first page of the original manu- 
script of the first great chorus in "Atalanta in 
Calydon" corrected in Swinburne's own hand. 
Marston requested that she should be his liter- 
ary executor. Speaking of this work some 
years later, Mrs. Moulton said: 

"Wlien I first knew the Marstons they were 
a group of five, — dear old Dr. Marston, his 
son, Philip Bourke Marston, his unmarried 
daughter Cecily, his married daughter Mrs. 
Arthur O'Shaughnessy, and her husband. I 
edited a volume of selections by O'Shaugh- 
nessy; and I was named by Mr. Marston, in 
his will, as his literary executor. I brought 
out after his death a volume whose contents 
had not been hitherto included in any book, 
and which I called 'A Last Harvest.' Then 
I put all his flower-poems together (as he had 
long wished to do) in a volume by themselves, 
which was entitled 'Garden Secrets.' Finally 
I have brought out a collected edition of his 
poems, including the three volumes published 
before his death, and the ones I had compiled 
after he died. 



138 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

"Ah, you may well call his life tragic. He 
was only three years old when he lost his 
sight. He was educated orally, but his knowl- 
edge of literature was a marvel. The poets 
of the past were his familiar friends, and he 
could repeat Swinburne's poems by the hour. 
To recite Rossetti's 'House of Life' was one 
of the amusements of his solitary days. But 
he longed, beyond all things, to be constantly 
in touch with the world — to know what every 
year, every month, was producing. *Can 
you fancy what it is,' he would say to me 
sometimes, 'to be just walled in with books 
that you are dying to read, and to have them 
as much beyond your reach as if they were the 
other side of the world ? ' Yet he had, despite 
his sad fate, the gayest humor — the most 
naturally cheerful temperament; he could be 
so merry with his friends — so happy 'when 
there was anything to be happy about.' Of 
his work 'Garden Secrets' is uniquely charm- 
ing. Rossetti once wrote him, in a letter of 
which I am the fortunate possessor, that he had 
been reading these 'Garden Secrets,' the 
evening before, to William Bell Scott, the poet- 
artist, and adds, 'Scott fully agreed with me 
that they were worthy of Shakespeare, in his 
subtlest lyrical moods.' Some of the best 
critics in London declared that the author of 



POET AND FRIEND 139 

'Song-Tide' (Marston's first volume) should, 
by virtue of this one book, take equal rank 
with Swinburne, Morris, and Rossetti. Cer- 
tainly his subsequent volumes fully sustained 
the promise of this first one, and I feel that 
when Philip Bourke Marston died, at the age 
of thirty-seven, on the fourteenth of Febru- 
ary, 1887, England lost one of her noblest 
and subtlest poets — one whose future prom- 
ise it were hard to overrate. Sometimes I 
think I care most for some of his sonnets ; then 
the subtle beauty of his lyrics upbraids me, — 
and I hardly know which to choose. Take 
him all in all, he seems to me a poet whom 
future generations will recognize and re- 
member." 

Regarding the death of Mr. Marston, Mr. 
Wliittier wrote to the friend who had brought 
so much brightness into the life of the blind 
poet: 

Mr. Whittier to Mrs. Moulton 

Centre Harbor, N. H., 7th month, 1887. 

My dear Friend, Louise Chandler 
Moulton: It was very kind in thee to send 
thy admirable little book and most welcome 
letter. We have read thy wise and charming 
essay up here among the hills, and under the 
shadow of the pines, vni\\ hearty approval. 



140 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

It was needed, and will do a great deal of 
good to young people, in the matter of man- 
ners and morals. 

It seems a very long time since I had the 
great pleasure of seeing thee, or of hearing 
directly from thee. I meant to have been in 
Boston in the early spring, and looked forward 
to the satisfaction of meeting thee, but I was 
too ill to leave home, and I felt a real pang of 
regret when I learned of thy departure. I am 
now much better, but although I cannot say 
with the Scotch poet that 

" the years hang o'er my back 
And bend me like a muckle pack," 

I must still confess that they are getting un- 
comfortably heavy. But I have no complaint 
to make. My heart is as warm as ever, and 
love and friendship as dear. 

I was pained by the death of thy friend, 
Philip Marston. It must be a comfort to thee 
to know that thy love and sympathy made his 
sad lot easier to be borne. He was one who 
needed love, and I think he was one to in- 
spire it also. 

My old and comfortable hotel at Centre 
Harbor, where I have been a guest for forty 
years, was burned to ashes a few days ago, 
after we came away. But we are now in good, 



POET AND FRIEND 141 

neat quarters at a neat farm house, with large 
cool rooms on the border of the lovely lake. 

Good-bye, dear friend ! \Vliile enjoying thy 
many friends in London, do not forget thy 
friends here. 

Ever affectionately thy old fjiend, 

John G. Whittier. 

Herbert E. Clarke, the warm and intimate 
friend of Marston, touchingly alludes to his 
death in this sonnet. 

TO LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 

Ah, friend, the die is cast, — life turns to prose. 

My way lies onward — dusty, hot, and bare, 

Through the wide plain under the noonday glare, — 
A sordid path whereby no singer goes; 
For yon the cloudy crags — the stars and snows — 

Limitless freedom of ethereal air 

And pinnacles near heaven. On foot I fare, 
Halting foredoomed, and toward what goal who knows? 
But though the singer who may sing no more 

Bears ever in his heart a smothered fire, 
I give Fate thanks: nor these my pangs deplore. 

Seeing song gave first rewards beyond desire — 
Your love, O Friend, and his who went before, 

The sightless singer with his silver lyre. 
London, 1st August, 1888. 

To Arlo Bates, Mrs. Moulton, reading this, 
repeated the closing line with a touching ten- 
derness, and then without further word laid 
the manuscript aside. 



142 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

In the middle years of the eighties Mrs. 
Moulton began to send to the Boston Herald 
a series of literary letters from London, and 
these she continued for a number of years. 
She was especially well fitted for the under- 
taldng by her wide acquaintance with English 
writers, her unusual power of appreciating 
work not yet endorsed by public approval, 
and her sympathetic instinct for literary 
quality. The work, while arduous, gave her 
pleasure, chiefly because it provided oppor- 
tunity for her to give encouragement and aid 
to others, and to help to make better known 
writers and work not yet appreciated in 
America. "I am sending a literary letter each 
week to the Boston Herald,"" she writes Mr. 
Stedman. "It is hard work, but it gives me 
the pleasure of expressing myself about the 
current literature. I believe the letters are 
accounted a success." 

Many were the letters of gratitude which 
came to her from those of whom she had writ- 
ten. The sympathetic quality of her approval, 
so rarely found in combination with critical 
judgment, made her praise especially grate- 
ful. Not only did she interest and enlighten 
her reading public, but she encouraged and 
inspired those of whom she wrote. 

Other letters of grateful recognition came 




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Facsimile of the Original Draft of " Laus Veneris," 
IN Mrs. Moulton's Handwriting 

Page 143 




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POET AND FRIEND 143 

now and then from artists of whose work she 
had written in verse. After a visit to the stu- 
dio of Burne-Jones in London she was in- 
spired to write the admirable and subtle lyric 
"Laus Veneris," upon his picture of that 
name. 

Pallid with too much longing, 

White with passion and prayer. 
Goddess of love and beauty, 

She sits in the picture there, — 

Sits with her dark eyes seeking 

Something more subtle still 
Than the old delights of loving 

Her measureless days to fill. 

She has loved and been loved so often. 

In the long, immortal years, 
That she tires of the worn-out rapture. 

Sickens of hopes and fears. 

No joys or sorrows move her. 

Done with her ancient pride; 
For her head she found too heavy 

The crown she has cast aside. 

Clothed in her scarlet splendor, 

Bright with her glory of hair. 
Sad that she is not mortal, — 

Eternally sad and fair, — 

Longing for joys she knows not, 

Athirst with a vain desire. 
There she sits in the picture. 

Daughter of foam and fire. 



144 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

It is not to be wondered that the artist wrote 
in warm acknowledgment : 

Mr. Burne-Jones to Mrs. Moulton 

" I think you must know how glad all workers 
are of such sympathy as you have shown me, 
and I don't know of any other reward that 
one ever sets before one's self that can be 
compared for a moment with the gratified 
sense of being understood. It 's like hearing 
one's tongue in a foreign land. I do assure 
you I worked all the more confidently the day 
your letter came. Confidence and courage 
do often fail, and when all the senses are 
thoroughly tired with w^ork, and the heart 
discouraged, a tribute like the one you sent 
me is a real refreshment.'* 

During all these years Mrs. Moulton's 
mastery of technical form, and especially her 
efficiency in the difficult art of the sonnet, 
had steadily increased. George H. Boker 
wrote to her: *'In your ability to make the 
sonnet all it should be you surpass all your 
living, tuneful sisterhood." Certainly after 
the death of Mrs. Browning no woman writ- 
ing English verse could be named as Mrs. 
Moulton's possible rival in the sonnet save 
Christina Rossetti, and no woman in America, 



POET AND FRIEND 145 

if indeed any man, could rank with her in 
this. 

In many of Mrs. Moulton's sonnets is 
found a subtle, elusive suggestion of spiritual 
things, as if the poet were living between 
the two worlds of the seen and the unseen, 
with half-unconscious perceptions, strange and 
swift, of the unknown. With this spiritual 
outlook are mingled human love and longing. 
The existence of any genuine poet must be 
dual. He holds two kinds of experience, 
one that has been lived in outward life; the 
other, not less real, that has been lived intui- 
tively and through the power of entering, by 
sympathy, into other lives and varied qualities 
of experience. 

Mrs. Moulton's imaginative work, both 
in her stories and her poems, suggests this 
truth in a remarkable degree. Her nature 
presents a sensitive surface to impressions. 
She has the artist's power of selection from 
these, and the executive gift to combine, 
arrange, and present. Thus her spiritual recep- 
tivity gives to her work that deep vitality, 
that sense of soul in it that holds the reader, 
while her artistic touch moulds her rare and 
exquisite beauty of finished design. 

In 1889 Mrs. Moulton published another 
volume of collected talcs, the last that she 

10 



146 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

made. It was entitled "Miss Eyre from 
Boston, and Other Stories." Her natural 
power and grace in fiction made these charm- 
ing, but it is by her poetry rather than by her 
prose that she will be remembered. To her 
verse she gave her whole heart. To her 
short stories only, so to say, her passing fancy. 
On her way north from a visit to her daugh- 
ter in Charleston, Mrs. Moulton saw Walt 
Whitman. Little as she could be in sympathy 
with his chaotic art-notions, she was much im- 
pressed by his personality. Her diary records : 

" Went with Talcott Williams to see Walt 
Whitman, a grand, splendid old man. He 
sat in the most disorderly room I ever saw, 
but he made it a temple for his greatness. 
He expounded his theories of verse ; he spoke 
of his work, of his boyhood; of his infirmi- 
ties merely by way of excuse for his difficulty 
in moving, and he gave me a book. He was 
altogether delightful." 

From the diary one gets a curiously vivid 
impression that Mrs. Moulton's work was 
done in the very midst of interruptions and 
almost in an atmosphere so markedly social 
that it might seem to be utterly incompatible 
with imaginative production. Of course, a 
large number of those whom she saw most 



POET AND FRIEND 147 

intimately were concerned chiefly with the 
artistic side of Hfe, and this in a measure 
explains the anomaly; but the fact remains 
that she had an extraordinary power of doing 
really fine work in scraps and intervals of time 
which would to most writers have seemed 
completely inadequate. 

"Full of interruptions, but managed to get 
written an editorial entitled 'A Post Too 
Late.'" 

** Went to Lady Seton's breakfast-party and 
sat beside Oswald Crawfurd. In the morn- 
ing before I went out at all I wrote a sonnet 
commencing, 

" Have pity on my loneliness, my own! " 

"Finished Herald letter. Mr. F. W. H. 
Myers called. Lunched at Walter Pater's 
and met M. Gabriel Sarrazin, the French 
critic, who told me that Guy de Maupassant 
thought the three disgraces for a French 
author were to be decore, to belong to the 
Academy, and to write for the Revue des 
Deux Mondes.'' 

*'Jan. 1, 1889. Wrote poem, 'At Dawn,' 
or whatever better title I can think of. Spent 
the time from 8 to 2 in correcting my 13,000 
Avords story," 



148 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

"Loiiise Guiney came in to help me look 
over my poems. We worked till night, then 
went to the Cecilia concert to hear Maida 
Lang's quartet." 

"Such a busy mornina: ! Polished off a 
rondel to send to the Independent. Read 
Herald proof; wrote letters. This after- 
noon pleasant guests, — Mrs. Ole Bull, Mr. 
Chfford, Percival Lowell, and others." 

[In New York.] "Went over to Brooklyn 
and gave a Browning reading. . . . Met the 
Russian Princess Engalitcheff. Limched at 
Mrs. Field's with the Princess and Mr. and 
Mrs. Locke Richardson. Went in the even- 
ing to the Gilders.' " 

"Wroteahttle. . . . Mrs. [John T.] Sargent 
and sweet Nellie Hutchinson called in the 
forenoon; and in the afternoon ten people, 
including Stedman." 

[In London.] "Worked on poems in fore- 
noon. Had a lovely basket of flowers from 
dear old Mr. Greenough. Gave a little 
dinner at night at the Grand Hotel, to the 
Oswald Crawfurds, Sir Bruce Seton, Mrs. 
Trubner, and Mr. Greenough." 

Extracts of this sort might be multiplied, 
and they explain why it was that amid so 



POET AND FRIEND 149 

much apparent preoccupation with social 
affairs Mrs. Moulton kept steadily her place 
as a literary worker. Iler genuine and abid- 
ing love for letters was the secret of her ability 
thus to enter with zest into the pleasures of 
life without losing her powder of artistic pro- 
duction. 

Among the records of the year 1889 is this 
touching entry, with the date April 27, at 
the close of a visit to her mother : 

"Poor mother's last words to me were: *I 
love you better than anything in this world. 
You are my first and last thought. Believe 
it, for it is the truth.^^' 

In London this summer Mrs. Moulton was 
considering a title for a new volume of poems, 
and had asked advice of William Winter. 
He chanced to be in England at the time, 
and wrote at once: 

Mr. Winter to Mrs. Moulton 

No. 13 Upper Phillimore Place, 
High Street, Kensington, 
August 14, 1889. 

Dear Louise : Your letter has just come. 
Business aff'airs brought me suddenly to town. 
I will seek to see you as soon as they can 
be disposed of, Saturday or Sunday, perhaps. 



150 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

But I deeply regret your not coming to the 
"Red Horse." He rnight have led us a glori- 
ous fairy race. The only one of your titles 
that hits my fancy is "Vagrant Moods," and 
that is not good enough. Fancy titles are 
dangerous things. They generally have been 
used before. I once made use of the word 
"Tliistledown," as a title for a collection 
of my poems, and too late found it had been 
used by an American lady, Miss Boyle, for 
a similar purpose. And Miss Boyle, or her 
attorneys, threatened me with the terrors of 
the law for infringement of copyright. I was 
also told that Miss Boyle's book had recently 
passed through my hands; and this was 
true, though I had not the least recollection 
of the book or its title. In fact, I had never 
read a line of it, but only at the request of a 
friend of hers turned it over to Bayard Taylor 
for review. He wrote a notice of it in The 
Tribune. And here, only lately, I learn 
from an Australian paper that my title of 
"Shakespeare's England," used by me to 
indicate the England of poetry, was used 
twenty-five years ago by a writer about the 
active England of Shakespeare's time. " Poems, 
by L. C. M. " would be safer than any fancy 
title. "Awfully hackneyed," I hear. Well, 
if you have a fancy title, why not cull out a 



POET AND FRIEND 151 

Shakespearian phrase ? "The Primrose Path," 
say ? Think a little about this. I \\ill think 
further. Only look up clear, and so God 
bless you and good night. — What a lonely 
place this with no one to speak to and no 
one to hear. 

Always, 

Your old friend, 

William Winter. 

The solution of Mrs. Moulton's difficulty 
was found in the attractive title, "In the 
Garden of Dreams." The volume appeared 
in the following year. 

Among the special friendships of Mrs. 
Moulton's life of both literary and personal 
interest, one of the most important and enjoy- 
able to her was that with Professor Arlo Bates, 
the poet and romancist, whose work she 
appreciated highly and whose sympathetic 
companionship gave her great pleasure. With 
him she felt a peculiar sympathy, and to him 
she wrote a series of letters, extending over 
many years, beginning in the decade of the 
eighties. The extracts presented from these 
are here grouped, as, while they thus lose a 
strict chronological thread, they gain in a 
more complete representation, and their nature 
is such that the precise date (rarely given, 



152 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

indeed, as they were mostly dated by a month 
only) is, in any case, negligible in importance. 
The extracts chosen deal almost exclusively 
with literary matters. The only son of Pro- 
fessor Bates, in his twentieth year, afterward 
the author of "A Madcap Cruise," whom 
Mrs. Moulton playfully called "Prince Oric," 
and to whom in his sixth year she wrote a 
delicious sonnet under that title, is alluded to, 
as well as is his mother, who wrote over the 
pen-name Eleanor Putnam. 

Mrs. Moulton to Arlo Bates 

"... Thanks for the charming book. My 
love to the sweetest wife I know. Thank her 
for her letter. . . .'* 

"... Your letter about Marston's songs 
came to me when he and William Sharp 
happened to be passing the evening with me. 
I read it aloud, to Mr. Marston's great dehght. 
It quite went to his heart. ... I am so sorry 
I shall not find you and Mrs. Bates where 
you were last year. That desperate flirtation 
with Master Oric is off entirely. . . ." 

". . .1 have just been reading *Childe 
Roland,' and it baffles me, as it has so often 
done before. I feel less sure that I under- 
stand it than any other of Browning's poems. 



POET AND FRIEND 153 

Is the Black Tower Death, do you think? 
But what a wonderful poem it is ! I suppose 
spiritual judgments concern themselves with 
spiritual states. . . ." 

"... I am delighted with what you say of 
Mr. Marston's poem in Harper's, because I 
think the poem too subtle and delicate to be 
appreciated, save by the very elect ; and I am 
also deHghted because what you said gave 
him so much pleasure. Marston said of you, 
' Wliat a wonderful psychological vein, almost 
as powerful as that of Browning, runs through 
many of the poems of Mr. Bates.' . . ." 

"... I am so eager to see your novel of 
artistic Boston. 'The Pagans,' — a capital 
title. I am glad you have had the courage 
to tell the truth in it as you see it. I don't 
see it quite as you do, I fancy, but I am thank- 
ful when any one has the courage of his opin- 
ions, for it seems to me that the English and 
American writers are just now very much 
like cats standing on the edge of a stream, 
and afraid to put in their feet. They say what 
they think is expected of them to say, and 
they reserve the truth for the seasons w^ien 
they enter their closets and shut the door on 
all the world. I think there is more hypocrisy 
in novels than in religion." 



154 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

"... I am ashamed that two weeks have 
gone by since I received your noble book, 
'Told in the Gate.' I have not been so 
neglectful of it as it seems. I have not only 
taken my own pleasure in it, but I have shown 
it to other poets who are interested in know- 
ing what is being done in America. It is a 
beautiful book externally — how beautiful it 
is internally I am sure the world of readers 
will eagerly perceive; but never one of them 
can love it more than I do. Even in print it 
is hard for me to say which poem I prefer. 
There is not one among them that is not well 
done from the point of art, and thrillingly 
interesting as a story. The lyrics star the 
book like gems. They sing themselves over 
and over to my listening mind. ... I feel a 
glow of exultant pride that the author is my 
friend. I am proud and glad to have my 
name inscribed in a volume I so admire and 
love. I am enjo}ing London as I always do. 
... I go toward the end of August to pay 
some visits in Scotland, and then to visit Lady 
Ashburton in Hampshire and after that to 
Paris. I enclose some foreign stamps for the 
young Prince. . . . Your poems are among 
the pleasures of my life." 

Of the sonnets of Mr. Bates Mrs. Moulton 
wrote : 



POET AND FRIEND 155 

"... Dante breathed through the sonnet 
the high aspirations of that love which shaped 
and determined his soul's life. By sonnets it 
was that Petrarch wedded immortally his 
name to that of his ever-wooed, never-won 
Laura of Avignon. Strong Michael Angelo 
wrote sonnets for that noble lady, Vittoria 
Colonna, whose hand he kissed only after 
Death had kissed the soul from her pure lips. 

" The one personal intimacy with Shake- 
speare to which any of his w^orshippers have 
been admitted is such as comes from loving 
study of his sonnets, in 'sessions of sweet, silent 
thought.' The sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning burned with the pure flame of her 
perfect love. In the sonnets of 'The House 
of Life' Rossetti commemorated that love and 
loss so passionate and so abiding that it 
seemed to him the whole of life. In the 
sonnets of 'Song-Tide' Marston sang the 
praises of his early love, as in those of 'All In 
Air he bewailed her loss; and his sonnets 
of later years throb like a tell-tale heart ^vith 
the profoundest melancholy out of whose 
depths a human soul ever cried for pity. 

" Such and thus intimate have been the 
revelations made through this form of verse — 
so rigid, yet so plastic and so human. 

" To the list of these sonneteers who have 



156 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

thus sounded the deepest depths of love and 
sorrow, the name of Arlo Bates has now been 
added, by the pubhcation of his noble and 
sincere 'Sonnets in Shadow.' Born of one 
man's und}dng pain, these sonnets at once 
become, through the subtlety of their research 
into the innermost depths of human emotion, 
the property and the true expression of all 
souls who have loved and suffered. 

*'A few of us know, personally, the rare 
charm, the exquisite loveliness, of her thus 
royally honored and passionately lamented; 
and all of us who read can feel that thus and 
thus our own hearts might be wrung by such 
a loss — that in us, also, if w^e have souls at 
all, such sorrow might bear fruit in kindred 
emotion, even though for want of words our 
lips be dumb. It seems to me that it is the 
dumb souls — who feel all that the poet has 
sung, and yet cannot break the silence with a 
cry — who owe the deepest debt to this, 
their interpreter." 

Mrs. Moulton to Mr. Bates 

"OCTOBEB 27, 1889. 

" I have been passing this rainy afternoon 
with your sonnets. I had read some of them 
more than once before, but this afternoon I 



POET AND FRIEND 157 

have been quite alone save for their good 
company. I have read the strong, noble 
sequence through, from first to last, enjoying 
them more than ever. I like every one of 
them, but I had a pencil and paper by me 
and put down the numbers that most moved 
me. I see that my list is not short; do you 
care to see what it includes ? It begins with 
the beautiful sonnet of dedication; then the 
first, with its wonderful procession of the gray 
days passing the torpid soul, and laying 
their 'curious fingers, chill and numb,' 
upon its wounds. Then the sixth, with the 

"... drowned sailors, lying lank and chiU 
Under the sirupy green wave. 

And the fifteenth with its visions of love. 

" Never can joy surmise how long are sorrow's hours, 

ought to be, like certain lines of Wordsworth, 
among the immortal quotations. I think your 
sonnets noble alike in thought and in execution. 
They can have no more faithful lover than I 
am ; and I do believe that if there is anything 
in which my opinion has any value, it is on 
the form of poetry. I love it so sincerely 
and I have studied it so devotedly. . . . 

'* . . . Mrs. Spofford has been to stay over 
Sunday with me and I read through to her 
your new volume of poems, with the excep- 



158 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

tion of 'The Lilies of Mummel See,' which 
she read to me. I think you would be pleased, 
could you know how much we both enjoyed 
and admired the book. To my mind, ' Under 
the Beech Tree ' is the finest romantic drama 
of the time. I like it far better than I do 
'Colombe's Birthday,* much as I like that. 
Mrs. Spofford is quite wild with enthusiasm 
about 'The Gift.' She said the last line, 

"His heart is still mine, beating warm in my grave, 

is not only the finest line in your book, but 
the finest line that has been written by any one 
in a score of years." 

"... Your suggestion as to national char- 
acteristics of women struck me as a curious 
coincidence with the fact that the editor of 
the Fortnightly has just asked me to write 
an article on American and English women, 
contrasting and comparing them, and discuss- 
ing their differences. But the differences 
seem to me individual, not national. 

" Thanks for your suggestion about the 
sonnet. 

" Break through the shining, splendid ranks 

seems to me simpler and more forcible, but 
then this involves the 'I pray,' to which you 
greatly object. 



POET AxND FRIEND 159 

"Break through their splendid mih'tant array: 

*'I'll copy both, and see what you think. 
On the whole, I hke yours better. 

"I have been arranging books all the after- 
noon, and I am so tired that I wish I had 
the young prince here, or such another,— 
only there is no other." 

The same to the same 

"Dear Pagax: I am on page 238 of *The 
Puritans,' and I pause to say how piteously 

cruel is your portrait of -. Sargent, at 

his best, was never so relentlessly realistic. I 
pity Fenton so desperately I can hardly bear 
it. AMiy do I sympathize so ^ith him when 
he is so little worthy ? Is it your fault, or mine ? 
I beheve I am not pitiless enough to write 
novels, even if I had every other qualification. 

"Your character of Fenton is admirably 
studied. It is worthy of the author of 'The 
Pagans' and 'A \Vheel of Fire.'" 

"... I have finished reading 'The Puri- 
tans,' — all the duties of life neglected till I 
came to the end. I have not been so inter- 
ested in a book for ages. I am especially in- 
terested in the conflict of the souls between 
degrees of agnosticism. It is the keenest 
longing of my fife to know what is truth." 



160 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

**I have reason to be grateful for your birth- 
day, since I find you one of the most interest- 
ing persons I have ever had the happiness to 
know." 

"I have just finished reading *The Diary of 
a Saint,' and I cannot wait an hour to tell you 
how very greatly I admire it. It has been said 
that all the stories were told. You prove how 
untrue is this statement, — for your story, 
or anything like it, has never been told before. 
It is absolutely unique and original. ... I 
am so interested in every page of the book that 
I have an impatient desire to know all the 
spiritual experiences that lead to it." 

"Just now at Les Voirons (Haute Savoie) I 
have found a sort of hilltop paradise. Four 
thousand and more feet above the sea level, 
the air is like balm, and the views indescrib- 
ably lovely. I have never seen Mont Blanc 
half so well. It is far more wonderful than 
the view from Chamounix. And just now at 
night the white ghost of a young moon hangs 
above it, in a pale, clear sky, and the lesser 
peaks all around shimmer in the moon- 
light. This hotel is ten climbing miles from 
any railroad station. You can buy nothing 
here but postage stamps." 



POET AND FRIEND 161 

In a characteristic letter from Rome, Rich- 
ard Greenough, the sculptor, says: 

Mr. Greenough to Mrs. Moulton 

"The sidereal certainty of your movements 
impresses me. It reminds me of the man who 
ordered his dinner in England a year in ad- 
vance, and when the time came he was there 
to eat it. ... Do I feel sure of a life after 
this.? Was ever a note charged with such 
heavy ballast ? To attempt an answer would 
take a volume, — to give an answer would re- 
quire a conscience. . . . Wliile reading Cic- 
ero's Tusculan Disputations *On Grief,' I 
found a quotation from Sophocles that re- 
minds me of your loss in Phihp's death. 

*'No comforter is so endowed with wisdom 
That while he soothes another's heavy grief, 
If altered fortune turns on him her blow. 
He will not bend beneath the sudden shock 
And spurn the consolation he had given. 

"I wonder if you know how poetic you are ? 
Do what you may, — read, write, or talk, you 
make real hfe seem ideal, and ideal hfe seem 
real. Your sweet 'After Death' is above all 
praise." 

On the appearance of "Robert Elsmere" 
Mrs. Moulton read it with the greater inter- 

11 



162 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

est in that, as has already been noted, her 
own mind constantly reverted to religious 
problems. Writing to Mrs. Humphry Ward 
to congratulate her on the achievement, she 
received the following reply: 

Mrs. Ward to Mrs. Moulton 

London, June 20, 1888. 

Dear Mrs. Moulton: Thanks for your 
interesting letter in re Robert Elsmere. There 
is no answer merely to the problems of evil 
and suffering except that of an almost blind 
trust. I see dimly that evil is a condition of 
good. Heredity and environment are awful 
problems. They are also the lessons of God. 
Sincerely yours, 

Mary A. Ward. 

The publication in 1889 of the collection of 
poems entitled "In the Garden of Dreams" 
added greatly to Mrs. Moulton's standing as 
a poet. On the titlepage were the lines of 
Tennyson : 

Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite 
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love. 

The book contained a group of lyiics **To 
French Tunes," which showed that Mrs. 
Moulton had responded to the fashion for 



POET AND FRIEND 163 

the old French forms of rondel, rondeau, 
triolet, and so on which in the eighties pre- 
vailed among London singers. They showed 
her facility in manipulating words in metre 
and were all graceful and delicate; but she 
was a poet of emotion too genuine and feeling 
too strong to be at her best in these artificial 
and constrained measures. She wrote a few 
in later years, which were included in the 
volume called "At the Wind's Will," but al- 
though they were praised she never cared for 
them greatly or regarded them as counting 
for much in her serious work. The book as a 
whole showed how the natural lyric singer 
had developed into the fine and subtle artist. 
The noblest portion of the collection, as in 
her whole poetic work, was perhaps in the 
sonnets ; but throughout the volume the music 
of the lines was fuller and freer, the thought 
deeper, the emotion more compelling than in 
her earlier work. With this volume Mrs. 
Moulton took her place at the head of living 
American poets, or, as an English critic 
phrased it, "among the true poets of the 
day." 

The voice of the press was one of unani- 
mous praise on both sides of the Atlantic. 
The privately expressed criticisms of the mem- 
bers of the guild of letters were no less in 



164 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

accord. Mrs. Spofford said of "Waiting 
Night": 

"It is a perfect thing. The wings of flying 
are all through it. It is fine, and free, and 
beautiful as the 'Statue and the Bust.' It is 
high, and sweet, and touching." 

Dr. Holmes to Mrs. Moulton 

296 Beacon St., 
December 29, 1889. 

My dear Mrs. Moulton: I thank you 
most cordially for sending me your beautiful 
volume of poems. They tell me that they are 
breathed from a woman's heart as plainly as 
the fragrance of a rose reveals its birthplace. 
I have read nearly all of them — a statement 
I would not venture to make of most of the 
volumes I receive, the number of which is 
legion, and I cannot help feeling flattered that 
the author of such impassioned poems should 
have thought well enough of my own produc- 
tions to honor me with the kind words I find 
on the blank leaf of a little book that seems 
to me to hold leaves torn out of the heart's 
record. 

Believe me, dear Mrs. Moulton, 
Faithfully yours, 

O. W. Holmes. 



^ (f3e.^.c^^^' ^^^-^f 



ijT 



'^^ ^U^^ .^^ ' /^?l^..^^ , 



Facsimile of a Letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes 



^^^ Y <^ -^^-^^ ^^^-.>^ ^^^^^ <^^^^.^^ 



POET AND FRIEND 165 

Dr. Rolfe to Mrs. Moulton 

Cambridge, Christmas, 1889. 

Dear Mrs. Moulton: How can I thank 
you enough for giving me a free pass to your 
''Garden of Dreams" with its dehghtful 
wealth of violets, fresh and sweet, hhes and 
roses, rosemary, and Elysian asphodel, and 
every flower that sad embroidery weaves ? 
Put your ear down close and let me whisper 
very confidentially, — tell it not at our meet- 
ings at the Bruns\\ick, publish it not in the 
streets of Boston ! that I like your delicate 
and fragrant blossoms better than some of the 
hard nuts that the dear, dead Browning has 
given us in his "Asolando." Sour critics may 
tell us that the latter will last longer, — they 
are tough enough to endure, — but I doubt 
not that old Father Time, — who is not desti- 
tute of taste, withal, — will press some of 
your charming flowers between his ponderous 
chronicles, where their lingering beauty and 
sweetness will delight the appreciation of 
generations far distant. So may it be ! 

Luckily, one may wander at will wdth im- 
punity in your lovely garden, even if he has 
as bad a cold as at present aflSicts and stupe- 
fies your friend, though he may enjoy these 
all the more when he recovers his wonted good 



166 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

health. If this poor expression of his grati- 
tude seems more than usually weak and stupid, 
ascribe it to that same villainous cold, and 
believe him, in spite of it, to be always grate- 
fully and cordially yours. 

With the best wishes of the holiday time, 

W. J. ROLFE. 

Mr. Greenough to Mrs. Moulton 

"December, 1889. 

'*I took a long walk in 'The Garden of 
Dreams.' What a perfect title ! Dr. Charles 
Waldstein is staying with me on his way to 
Athens, and I read him some of these poems 
which most pleased me, finding instant re- 
sponse. 

"You will feel Browning's death very much. 
Story was with him only a few wrecks ago. 
They were making excursions, and, despite 
remonstrances, Brow^ning insisted on scaling 
heights, though often obliged to stop. It was 
a great disappointment to his son that he could 
not be buried by E. B. B., as he desired to be. 
. . . Yes, positively and inexorably, the past 
exists forever. We do not apprehend it, owing 
to the limitations of our faculties, but once 
granting the removal of these limitations by 
organic change (as by death), then the past 
becomes awakened, and we are again alive 



POET AND FRIEND 1C7 

in the entity of our being. Then the latent 
causes of our actions, for good or evil, are as 
patent to us as to the Author of our being. 
The friends we long to see are present. This 
is a practical glance at the thing. ..." 

Such extracts might be extended almost 
indefinitely, for with Mrs. Moulton's very 
large circle of friends the number of letters 
which naturally came to her after the ap- 
pearance of a new volume was inevitably 
large, and "In the Garden of Dreams" was 
so notable an achievement as to make this 
especially true. The closing decade found 
her rich in fame and in friends with an ac- 
knowledged and indeed undisputed place in 
the literary world, not only on this side of the 
water but the other, and the consciousness 
that it had been won not alone by her great 
natural gifts and marked personal charm, but 
by sincere and conscientious devotion, un- 
tiring and unselfish, to her art. 

A pleasant closing note was a Christmas 
card adorned with violets, on the back of which 
William Sharp had written the graceful lines : 

TO L. C. M. 

From over-sea 
Violets (for memories) 
I send to thee. 



168 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Let them bear thought of me, 

With pleasant memories 
To touch the heart of thee. 

From over-sea. 

A little way it is for love to flee. 

Love winged with memories. 
Hither to thither over-sea. 



CHAPTER VI 

1890-1895 

And this is the reward. That the ideal shall be real to thee, 
and the impressions of the actual world shall fall like summer 
rain, copious, but not troublesome. . . , Doubt not, O Poet, 
but persist. — Emerson. 

Onward the chariot of the Untarrying moves; 
Nor day divulges him nor night conceals. 

William Watson. 

They are winged, like the viewless wind. 
These days that come and go. — L. C. M. 

MRS. MOULTON'S morning-room was 
on the second floor, its windows look- 
ing into the green trees of Rutland 
Square. In one corner was her desk, in the 
centre a table always piled with new books, 
many of which were autographed copies from 
their authors, and around the walls were low 
bookcases filled with her favorite volumes. 
Above these hung pictures, and on their tops 
were photographs and mementos. The man- 
tel was attractive with pretty bric-a-brac, 
largely gifts. Between the two front windows 
was her special table filled with the immedi- 



170 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

ate letters of the day, and by it her own chair 
in which, on mornings, she was quite sure to 
be found by the Httle group of friends privi- 
leged to familiar intimacy. 

No allusion to these delightful talks "\A^th 
Mrs. Moulton in her mornino--room could be 
complete without mention of her faithful and 
confidential maid, Katy, whom all the fre- 
quenters of the house regarded with cordial 
friendliness as an important figure in the 
household life. It was Katy who knew to a 
shade the exact degree of greeting for the un- 
ending procession of callers, from the friends 
dearest and nearest, to the wandering min- 
strels who should have been denied, though 
they seldom were. It was Ivaty who sur- 
rounded the gracious mistress of the estab- 
lishment with as much protection as was 
possible; but as Mrs. Moulton's sympathies 
were unbounded, while her time and strength 
had their definite limits, it "wall be seen that 
Katy's task was often difficult. 

The informal fingerings in Mrs. Moulton's 
morning-room were so a part of the "dear 
days" that "have gone back to Paradise" 
that Vk-ithout some picture of them no record 
of her Boston life could be complete. The 
first mail was an event, and to it Mrs. Moulton 
gave her immediate attention after glancing 



POET AND FRIEND 171 

through the morning paper with her coffee 
and roll. Her correspondence increased with 
every season, and \\liile it was a valued part 
of her social life, it yet became a very serious 
tax on her time and energy. There were 
letters from friends and from strangers; let- 
ters from tlie great and distinguished, and 
from the obscure; and each and all received 
from her the same impartial consideration. 
Every conceivable human problem, it would 
seem, would be laid before her. Her name 
was sought for all those things for which the 
patroness is invented ; there were not wanting 
those who desired her advice, her encourage- 
ment, her practical aid in finding, perhaps, a 
publisher for their hitherto rejected MSS. 
with an income insured ; and they wanted her 
photograph, her autograph, her biography in 
general; a written "sentiment" which they 
might, indeed, incorporate into their own con- 
coctions by way of adornment ; or they frankly 
wanted her autograph with the provision that 
it should be appended to a check, presumably 
of imposing dimensions, — all these, and a 
thousand other requests were represented in 
her letters, quite aside from the legitimate 
correspondence of business and friendship. 
With all these she dealt with a generous con- 
sideration whose only defect was perhaps a 



172 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

too ready sympathy. Her familiar friends 
might sometimes try to restrain her response. 
*'It is an imposition!" one might unfeelingly 
exclaim. "God made them," she would reply. 
And to the insinuation that the Divine Power 
had perhaps little to do in the creation of pro- 
fessional bores and beggars, she would smile 
indulgently, but she usually insisted that it 
"wasn't right" to turn away from any ap- 
peal, although, of course, all appeals were not 
to be granted literally. In vain did one be- 
seech her to remember Sir Hugo's advice to 
Daniel Deronda: "Be courteous, be obliging, 
Dan, but don't give yourself to be melted 
down for the tallow trade." She always in- 
sisted that even to be unwisely imposed upon 
was better than to refuse one in real need; 
and her charities — done with such delicacy 
of tender helpfulness that for them charity is 
too cold a name — were most generous. Her 
countless liberal benefactions, moreover, were 
of the order less easy than the mere signing 
of checks, for into them went her personal 
sympathy. She helped people to help them- 
selves in the most thoughtful and lovely 
ways. 

Now it was a typewriter given with such 
graceful sweetness to a literary worker whose 
sight was failing; now checks that saved the 



POET AND FRIEND 173 

day for one or another; again the numerous 
subscriptions to worthy objects ; or the count- 
less gifts and helps to friends. A woman 
lecturer had been ill and unfortunate, but 
had several modest engagements waiting in a 
neighboring city if only she had ten dollars 
to get there. Mrs. Moulton sent her fifty 
that she might have a margin for comforts 
that she needed. To a friend in want of 
aid to bridge over a short time was sent a 
check, totally unsolicited and undreamed of, 
and accepted as a loan ; but when the recipi- 
ent had, soon afterward, a birthday, a delicate 
note from Mrs. Moulton made the supposed 
loan a birthday gift. Never did any one make 
such a fine art of giving as did she. Pages 
could be filled \\ith these instances — the com- 
plete list, indeed, is known to the Recording 
Angel only. 

All the world of letters was talked over in 
those morning hours in her room. Sometimes 
her friends "gently wrangled," and bantered 
her with laughter and love. At one time she 
had made in a lyric a familiar allusion to 
larks and nightingales, and Louise Guiney, 
who, because she bore Mrs. Moulton's name, 
usually addressed her as " Godmam," took 
her to task for some ornithological inad- 
vertence in the terrestrial location of her 



174 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

nightingale. Colonel Higginson, in a review 
of her poems, had quoted the stanza: 

shall I He down to sleep, and see no more 
The splendid affluence of earth and sky ? 

The morning lark to the far heavens soar, 
The nightingale with the soft dusk draw nigh ? 

and had ungallantly commented: 

"But Mrs. Moulton has lain down to sleep 
all her life in America, and never looked for- 
ward to seeing the morning lark on awakening. 
She never saw or sought the nightingale at 
dusk in the green lanes of her native Connecti- 
cut. Wliy should she revert to the habits of 
her colonial ancestors, and meditate on these 
pleasing foreign fowl as necessary stage- 
properties for a vision of death and immor- 
tahty.?" 

Another writer had come to the defence of 
the poet in this fashion: 

"Considering that Mrs. Moulton goes to 
Europe the last of every April, not returning 
till late in October, it would seem natural 
for her to sing of 'larks and nightingales,' 
since she must hear them both sing in the 
English May. Do, dear Colonel Higginson, 
permit her to sing of them, though they are 
not native birds, since in the magic of her 
art she almost makes us hear them too." 



rOKT AND I RIKiNI) 175 

Miss Guincy, lau^Iiing over llicsc comments, 
turned to Mrs. Moulton. 

"CiocJrnain," she asked, "did you ever see 
a ni<^liiin^ale ?" 

"Wliy, yes, Louise; plenty of l,li(;m." 

"Where?" 

"Wljy, ariyvv})(;re. Out liere, J suppose," 
re[)lied the ehJer jjoet, dreamily ghxnein*^ 
from th(; windows of lier morning-room inio 
the tree-tops of Rutland Srpiare. '^In Lon- 
don, too, I heli(,'V(;," sIk; add(^d, rather vjigucly. 

"Singing in Trafalgar Square, godmam," 
rejoined the young(;r [>oct miseliievously. 

The informal loitenus in the jnornlng-rooni 
were never weary of asking Mrs. Moulton's 
impressions of London writers. 

"You knew Thomas Hardy well?" some- 
one would ask. 

"T knew him. I even venture to think of 
him ;is a friend — at least as a very fri(;ndly 
aff)uaintan(;e. I eared deeply for many of 
his hooks before I had the pleasure of meet- 
ing him; and I quite adored 'The Return of 
the Native.'" 

"And you liked th(^ author as wc.'ll as the 
books ?" 

"I think no one eould know Thomas Hardy 
and not like him. lie is sympathetic, genial, 
unaffected, altogether delightful ; somewhat 



176 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

pessimistic, to be sure, and with a vein of 
sadness — a minor chord in his psalm of Hfe : 
but all the same with a keen sense of fun. I 
remember I was telling him once about an 
American admirer of his. It was at a party 
at Hardy's own house, and a few people 
were listening to our talk. The American of 
whose praise I spoke was Charles T. Cope- 
land, of Harvard, who had just reviewed 
*Tess,' in the Atlantic Monthly. Mr. Hardy 
listened kindly, and then he said, 'What you 
say is a consolation, just now.' I knew some 
good fun lurked behind the quaint humor of 
his smile. *Why just now.?' I asked. 'Oh, 
I dined, two nights ago, at the house of a 
Member of Parliament. It w^as by way of 
being a political dinner; but, as "Tess" was 
just out, one and another spoke of it — 
kindly enough. Finally one lady, two or 
three seats away from me, leaned forward. 
Her clear voice commanded every one's atten- 
tion. "Well, Mr. Hardy," she said, "these 
people are complaining that you had Tess 
hanged in the last chapter of your book. That 
is not what I complain of. I complain be- 
cause you did not have all your characters 
hanged, for they all deserved it !" Don't you 
think, Mrs. Moulton, that after that I need 
consolation from somewhere.?'" 



POET AND FRIEND 177 

Many of her reminiscences which entered 
into the talk have been told in her newspaper 
letters, and need not be repeated here, but 
they took on a fresh vitality from the living 
voice and the gracious, unaffected manner. 

By some untraced or unanalyzed impulse 
Mrs. Moulton was apt to be moved on each 
New Year's day to write a poem. Usually 
this was a sonnet, but now and then a lyric 
instead; and for many years the first entry 
in the fresh volume of her diary records the 
fact. On the first of January, 1890, she 
writes : 

"Began the New Year by writing a sonnet, 
to be called *How Shall We Know,' unless I 
can find a better title." 

*'The Last Good-bye" was the title upon 
which she afterward fixed. 

On the fifth day of January of this year 
died Dr. Westland Marston. Mrs. Moulton 
wrote in her Herald letters a review of his life 
and work, in the course of which she said 
with touching earnestness : 

"I scarcely know a life which has been so 
tragic as his in the way of successive bereave- 
ments; and when I think of him as I saw 
him last, on the first day of last November 
— in his solitary library, with the pictures of 

12 



178 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

those he had loved and lost on its walls, and 
with only their ghosts for his daily company — 
I almost feel that, for his own sake, I ought to 
be glad that he has gone to join the beloved 
ones whom one can easily fancy making fes- 
tival of welcome for him." 

Her intimacy had been close with all the 
family, and while Edmund Gosse was right 
when he wrote to her that she seemed to him 
always to have been "Philip's true guardian- 
ray, or better genius," her friendship for 
Cecily Marston, for Mrs. O'Shaughnessy, and 
with Dr. Marston himself was hardly less 
close. The tragic ending of the family could 
not but cast a bleak shade over the opening 
year. 

Her relations with English writers and the 
good offices by which she helped to make 
their work better known on this side of the 
Atlantic might be illustrated by numerous 
letters. 

Richard Garnett to Mrs. Moulton 

British Museum, London, 
August 4, 1890. 

Dear Mrs. Moulton : I hope I need not 
say how your letter has gratified me. The 
progress of "The Twilight of the Gods" has 
been slow, and I was especially disappointed 



POET AND FRIEND 179 

that the endeavor to introduce it to the Ameri- 
can public through an American pubHsher 
fell through. But there seems token of its 
gradually making way, and I value your 
approbation among the most signal. I shall 
be delighted to receive the copy of your poems, 
which I know I can safely promise to admire. 
Believe me, 

Most sincerely yours, 

R. Garnett. 

Both Edmund Clarence Stedman and 
George Meredith had, each unknown to the 
other, suggested to Mrs. Moulton that she 
write a novel in verse. "Lucile" and "Aurora 
Leigh" had each in its time and way made 
a wide popular success, and they felt that 
Mrs. Moulton might succeed equally. To 
this suggestion Mr. Meredith alludes in a 
letter in which he thanks Mrs. Moulton for a 
copy of "In the Garden of Dreams." 

George Meredith to Mrs. Moulton 

March 9, 1890. 
"Dear Mrs Moulton: Your beautiful 
little volume charms us all. It is worth a 
bower of song, and I am rightly sensible of 
the gift. You are getting to a mastery of the 
sonnet that is rare, and the lyrics are ex- 



180 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

quisite. I hope you will now be taking some 
substantial theme, a narrative, for ampler 
exercise of your powers. I am hard at work 
and nearing the end of a work that has held 
me for some time. I have not been in 
London since the day of Browning's funeral, 
— a sad one, but having its glory. I had a 
tinge of apprehension the other day in hear- 
ing of Russell Lowell's illness. We have been 
reassured about him. Boston, I suppose, will 
soon be losing you. ..." 

In the years directly following its publica- 
tion, *'In the Garden of Dreams" went 
rapidly through several editions. One sonnet 
which elicited much praise was that called 

HELP THOU MINE UNBELIEF. 

Because I seek Thee not, oh seek Thou me! 

Because my lips are dumb, oh hear the cry 

I do not utter as Thou passest by 
And from my Hfe-long bondage set me free ! 
Because, content, I perish far from Thee, 

Oh, seize me, snatch me from my fate, and try 

My soul in Thy consuming fire ! Draw nigli 
And let me, blinded, Thy salvation see. 
If I were pouring at Thy feet my tears. 

If I were clamoring to see Thy face, 
I should not need Thee, Lord, as now I need. 
Whose dumb, dead soul knows neither hopes nor fears. 

Nor dreads the outer darkness of this place — 
Because I seek not, pray not, give Thou heed ! 



POET AND FRIEND 181 

The deeply religious feeling, the profound 
sincerity, and what might perhaps not inaptly 
be called the completely modern mood of 
this, a mood which in its essence is perma- 
nent but which in its outward form varies 
with each generation, gave it a power of 
wide appeal. A church paper in England 
said of it: 

" Profound faith in the infinite goodness of 
God is the spirit which animates most of Mrs. 
Moulton's work. The sonnet . . . deserves 
a place among the best devotional verse in 
the language. It is a question if, outside of 
the volume of Miss Rossetti, any devotional 
verse to equal this can be found in the work 
of a living woman-writer." 

The critic need hardly have limited himself 
to the poetry of women. Mrs. Moulton was 
all her life vitally interested in the religious 
side of life, and many more of her letters 
might have been quoted to show how con- 
stantly her mind returned to the question of 
immortality and human responsibility. The 
sonnet had become for her a natural mode of 
utterance, as it was for Mrs. Browning when 
she wrote the magnificent sequence which 
recorded her love; and in this especial poem 
is the essence of Mrs, Moulton's spiritual life. 



182 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Mrs. Moulton's mastery of the sonnet has 
been alluded to before, but as each new 
volume brought fresh proof of it, and as she 
went on producing work equally important, it 
is impossible not to refer to this form of her 
art ao-ain and ao-ain. Whittier wrote to her 
after the appearance of "In the Garden of 
Dreams": "It seems to me the sonnet was 
never set to such music before, nor ever 
weighted with more deep and tender thought ; " 
and Miss Guiney, in a review, declared that 
"we rest with a steadfast pleasure on the 
sonnets, and in their masterly handling of high 
thoughts." Phrases of equal significance might 
be multiplied, and to them no dissenting voice 
could be raised. 

In 1890 Mrs. Moulton brought out a 
volume of juvenile stories under the title 
"Stories Told at Twilight," and in 1896 
this was followed by another with the name 
"In Childhood's Country." Always whole- 
some, Idndly, attractive, these volumes had 
a marked success with the audience for which 
they were designed ; and of few books written 
for children can or need more be said. 

Among the letters of this period are a 
number from a correspondent signing "Pascal 
Germain." The w^riter had published a novel 
called "Rhea: a Suggestion," but his identity 



POET AND FRIEND 183 

has not yet been made public. Mrs. Moulton 
never knew who he was, but apparently opened 
the correspondence in regard to something 
which struck her in the book. Some clews 
exist which might be followed up were one 
inclined to endeavor to solve the riddle. 
After the death of Carl Gutherz, the artist 
who painted the admirable decoration "Light" 
for the ceiling of the Reading-room in the 
Congressional Library in Washington, his 
daughter found among the papers of her 
father a post-card signed Pascal Germain, 
and written from Paris in the manner of a 
familiar friend. Evidently Mr. Gutherz had 
known the mysterious writer well, but the 
daughter had no clew by which to identify 
him. 

A letter from Edward Stanton Huntington, 
author of "Dreams of the Dead," rather 
deepens than clears the mystery. The writer 
was a nephew of Bishop Huntington, and is 
not now living. 

Mr. Huntington to Mrs. Moulton 

" WoLLASTON, Mass. 
December 8, 1892. 

" My Dear Mrs. Moulton : I find myself 
unable to send the complete letters of my 
friend, Duynsters, but take pleasure in sending 



184 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

you the extracts referring to Pascal Germain. 
After the receipt of his letter (enclosed) dated 
June 1st, I wrote him of the conversation you 
and I had in regard to ' Rhea ' and the merits 
of the book. I also mentioned the photo- 
graph. He replies : 

" '\Miat you tell me of the photograph and 
Mrs. Moulton amuses me very much. Let 
me assure you that the photograph is no more 
the picture of Pascal Germain than it is of 
Pericles, or Gaboriau, or Zoroaster. I am 
the only human being who knows the identity 
of Germain, beside himself, and no one can 
possess his photograph.' 

"Duynsters then goes on to discuss the 
symbolism and sound psychology of the 
work. My own coi\clusion, after reading 
the words of my friend Duynsters, and hastily 
perusing 'Rhea,' (I confess I was not much 
interested in the book) — my conclusions are 
that Germain is the pen name of some man 
or woman of peculiar genius and eccentric 
taste. 

"Mr. Duynsters is a very cultivated man, 
one who has travelled extensively, and who 
has a keen judgment of men and affairs; so 
it puzzles me exceedingly to decide who 
this author of 'Rhea' really is. Time will 
telL ..." 



POET AND FRIEND 185 

A copy of '*Rhea" was among Mrs. Moul- 
ton's books, but the novel seems never to 
have made a marked impression on either 
side of the Atlantic. What is apparently the 
earliest letter remaining of the series seems 
to throw light on a passage in the note of Mr. 
Huntington, and to give the impression that 
Pascal Germain had played a mischievous 
trick on Mrs. Moulton by sending her a 
photograph which was not genuine. 

AI. Germain to Mrs. Moulton 

Monastery op Ste. Barbe, 
Seine Inferieure, France. 

Madame: It is in sincere gratitude that I 
tender you my thanks for your kind words 
about the photograph which I had many 
misgivings in venturing to lay before you, 
fearing it might be de trop. Whether you 
really forgive me for sending it, or were so 
gentle as to conceal your displeasure, it leaves 
me your debtor always. Although I write from 
Paris now, the above is my address, and I 
beg you will remember it if at any time I can 
serve you on this side of the ocean. I beg 
you to command me freely. 

Believe me to remain. 

Yours very faithfully, 

Pascal Germain. 



186 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

From the same 

Paris. Tuesday Morn. 

Dear Friend : I am inexpressibly touched 
by your letter, and I reply at once. I drop 
all other work to write to you, solely that I 
may lose no time. Yours of the 1st has been 
here only a few minutes. Believe me, your 
idea of death is purely a fancy, born of an 
atmosphere of doubt, out of which you must 
get as soon as possible. I am glad you wrote, 
for in this I may serve you as I have served 
others. 

Wlien I tell you I feel sure your phantom 
of approaching death is unreal, I am telling 
you a truth deduced from hard study, and 
than which no other conclusion could arrive. 
Of this I give you my most sacred assurance. 
Put this thought out of your mind as you 
would recoil from any adverse suggestion. 
The fact is, very few deaths are natural: 
they are the result of fear. The natural 
death is at the age of from a hundred to a 
hundred and twenty or thirty years. The 
deaths about us are from fright, ignorance, 
and concession to the opinions of uneducated 
friends, and half-educated doctors. This I 
know. I could cite you case after case of 



POET AND FRIEND 187 

those who have really died because the phy- 
sician asserted they could not live. 

If your delusion is mental, swing to the 
other side of the circle, and read or study the 
most agreeable things that are widely apart 
from what you have been dwelling upon. 
Exercise strengthens the mind. It is the 
folly of fools to speak of the brain being 
over-worked. It may be stupidly exercised, 
but if used in a catholic development, the use 
makes it more vigorous. Look at the blue 
sky; not the ground. God is the Creator, 
but man is also a creator. His health depends 
largely on his will, — that is to say, in the 
sense of that will being plastic to the Divine 
will. 

If your illness is physical stop thinking 
about yourself, — do as Saint Teresa did, 
take up some other subject, and suddenly you 
will find yourself well. Nature requires only 
a few months, not years, to make the body all 
over again. 

Death is natural. Few physicians know 
anything about it. They have shut down 
every window in their souls to the light. For 
your comfort let me tell you that what I am 
saying is the subject of a long talk with one 
of the first physicians on the Continent. 

Many things, accepted by the common 



188 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

people to be the result of miracle, are really 
the result of thought. That is, of mental force, 
used or misused. Don't misuse your forces. 
Read Plato if you have been reading too much 
modern fiction, or have been dipping too deep 
into Wittemberg's philosophy. It seems to 
me there can be no doubt of the survival of the 
individual soul. \Vliy not plant your feet on 
the facts we possess, and on faith, and philos- 
ophy.^ Read your "Imitatione Christi." It 
fits every mind by transposing the symbolism. 
I tell you frankly that even if no such man as 
Jesus ever lived, I can be serene with Plato's 
guidance and light. 

Stop critical reading. Really a critic is an 
interpreter, but what modern critic knows 
this ? The only modern critic I honor is 
Herbert Spencer. 

Believe me, 

Yours with great respect, 

Pascal Germain. 

From the same 

17, Avenue Gourgard (Monceau), Paris, 
September 13, 1890. 

My Dear Mrs. Moulton : I hope you have 
believed that all this while I have been away 
my letters were not forwarded and only now 



POET AND FIUKXI) 18f) 

can I tFiarik you for the beautiful volume you 
have sent me. 

I have wanrJererl through it reading over 
and over special poems that fascinate me. T 
have not really read them all yet, tliough I 
ought to know this volume very well, for 
I bought it some years ago. I am particularly 
pleased with the poems, '*A Painted Fan," 
and "The House of Death." The poem 
called *'Annie's Daughter" is picturesque to 
a great degree. By the way I have a letter 
from an American magazine asking me to 
write for them "anytliing." The letter is in 
French. Now why should I not write for them 
an article on your poems ? They tell me they 
will faithfully translate all I send. Your in- 
formant was right. I am French only on one 
side of the house. Lest I may forget, I want 
to say here and now how much I like your "At 
Etretat." I should have known it meant that 
place, even without the title. The picture is 
so vivid. Do you know the Riviera ? There 
is material for you In grays and browns, and 
the sound of the sea. But I think the poetry 
of the "fan" expresses you best, and there you 
have the advantage of being alone in your 
beautiful thought. What lonely things beauty, 
truth, and the soul are! The atoms never 
touch. 



190 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Forgive the length of this if you can, and 
believe me, 

Your faithful servant, 

Pascal Germain. 

From the same 

17, Avenue Gourgard (Monceau), Paris, 
December 24, 1891. 

Madame: I trust it will not displease you 
to hear from me again, though my fate is 
perilously uncertain, since not from you, nor 
from any mutual friend, can I be sure that my 
"Rhea" has not fallen under your displeasure. 
But I offer something more welcome to your 
poet's hands than any work of mine. The 
laurel which I enclose is from the casket of 
dear Owen Meredith. You may have seen in 
the newspapers an account of the brilliantly 
solemn funeral, when honors were paid him 
which only before have been paid to the Chief 
Marshals of France; and how through all 
that pomp and pageantry, but one laurel 
wreath rested on his casket, — the crown laid 
upon his beloved clay by his wife. 

There was a good deal of talk about this 
wreath, though no one but Lady Lytton and 
the sender knew from whence it came. It 
was I — yet not altogether myself, — for it 
was a late (too late) atonement for an unde- 



POET AND FRIEND 191 

livered message of love and thanks to the 
author of "Lucile" sent to him by a dear 
friend of mine, a Sister of Charity. 

Lord Lytton's death was, as you know, sud- 
den, and my message was unwritten because I 
had only returned to Paris after years of 
travelhng, and I wa.^ simply waiting for bet- 
ter news of him in order to go to the Embassy 
with the story of her hfe, and what the ideal 
woman in the poem had done for the heroine 
in the flesh, when the startling news of his 
death came. I did what I thought the dear 
Sister would like done, since words were use- 
less. One might quote his own words. 

Soul to soul, 

since from my hands to the poet's wife the 
laurel was laid upon him; and I send it be- 
cause it has a touch of the supernatural; of 
the mystical love and sweetness of your own 
domain, — and is no common occurrence, that, 
out of all the wreaths and tokens, sent by 
kings and queens and nobles, from all over 
the world, the one alone from a Sister of 
Charity, was laid upon his casket from the 
first, in the death-chamber, in the church, 
and in the sad procession, and finally buried 
with him at Knebworth. For I must ex- 
plain that not till a fortnight afterward did 



19£ LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Lady Lytton know that the laurel crown 
was not my gift alone. It was purely as my 
gift that she generously favored it above all 
others. 

She was profoundly touched when I told her 
the story, and only last Sunday she wrote and 
asked me if she might some day give it to the 
public, to which, of course, I assented. I am 
therefore breaking no confidence in sending 
these few leaves which I plucked from the 
wreath after it was woven. As they had faded 
I regilded them, as you see. (Laurels and 
gold for poets.) Nor is this boldness all mine. 
It is my artist friend. Monsieur Carl Gutherz, 
who bids me send them to you, "because," he 
says, *'they will weave into her fancies in some 
sweet and satisfying dream." 
Madame, believe me. 

Your faithful servant, 

Pascal Germain. 

Among the Moulton books now in the col- 
lection in the Boston Public Library is a 
16mo copy of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's 
"Paul et Virginie," bound in an old brocade 
of a lovely hue of old-rose. On its cover ob- 
liquely is to be seen the faintest shadow of a 
cross, and in it is preserved the following 
letter : 



POET AND FRIEND 193 

M. Germain to Mrs. Moulton 

Paris, Wednesday. 

My dear Mrs. Moulton : The little book 
is not quite what I was looking for. The bind- 
ing I was searching for I did not find, but if I 
delay too long, I shall be away to Madrid; 
not the place most likely to reward my search. 

I wonder if you will like the odd cover ? It 
was ordered by me in an impulse without 
stopping to reflect that its associations to me 
mean nothing to you. The bit of tapestry is 
the relic of one of the oldest and most pic- 
turesque chambers in Normandy, and was 
given me by a nun who nursed me through an 
illness there — in fact I begged her for it be- 
cause it is interwoven with a story which I 
think my best (not yet finished). If you hold 
the book so that the light plays horizontally, 
you will see the trace of time- wear in the shape 
of a f. The fabric was the vestment more 
than a hundred years in the service of the 
church there, and was worn by the hero of my 
story — a priest whose life was a long agony 
— for a fault nobly atoned. But I must not 
assume your interest in the tragedy. Per- 
haps the color — which an artist friend bor- 
rowed to robe one of his angels in — may 
please you. If not, kindly burn the packet, 

13 



194 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

as it has been consecrated — the fabric, not 
the book ; — for I owe the giver the courtesy 
of conforming to the old Catholic (nay, 
Egyptian, for the matter of that) rule to burn 
all sacred things when their day is done. 

No doubt the cover does not look profes- 
sional. I got it done at short notice by one 
not used to my sometimes eccentric requests 
and wishes. Will you kindly give it value ]by 
accepting it with the best wishes of 
Your very faithful, 

Pascal Germain. 

So these letters remain, with their curious 
suggestiveness. 

Mrs. Moulton's memorial volume on Arthur 
O'Shaughnessy was pubhshed in 1894, — a 
volume containing selections from his poems 
preceded by a biographical and critical in- 
troduction. Mrs. Spofford pronounced the 
book "an exquisite piece of work, full of inter- 
est and done with such delight in touch." Mrs. 
Moulton had written with her accustomed skill, 
and through every line spoke her intimate sym- 
pathy ^\dth the poet and with his work. 

Her summers, after the visit to her daughter 
in Charleston, were still passed in Europe. 
Rome, Florence, and other southern cities 
were often visited before she went to England 



POET AND FRIEND 195 

for her annual London season. Often, too, 
she made a stay in Paris either before or after 
her sojourn on the other side of the Channel. 
Among her friends in Paris were Marie 
Bashkirtseff and her mother, and not infre- 
quently she took tea at the studio. After the 
death of the artist, a number of letters passed 
between Mrs. Moulton and the heart-broken 
mother. 

Her friends in London were so many, and 
the diary records so many pleasant social 
diversions that it is no wonder that Thomas 
Hardy should write to her: "Why don't you 
live in London altogether.!^ You might thus 
please us, your friends, and send to America 
letters of a higher character than are usually 
penned. You would raise the standard of that 
branch of journalism." Season after season 
she notes dinners, luncheons, drives, functions 
of all sorts, and one does not wonder that with 
this and her really arduous literary work her 
health began to suffer. A German "cure" 
came to be a regular part of the summer pro- 
gramme, and yet with her eager temperament 
and keen interest in the human, she could not 
bring herself to forego the excitement and en- 
joyment which probably did much to make 
this necessary. 

Not a little did her voluminous correspond- 



196 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

ence add to the strain under which she lived. 
Continually in her diary are entries which 
show how heavy was the task of keeping up 
\\dth the flood of correspondence which con- 
stantly flowed in at her doors. "Letters, let- 
ters, letters to answer. Oh, dear, it seems to 
me that the whole of my life goes in writing 
letters. I wrote what seemed necessary letters 
till one P. M. Oh, what shall I do ? These 
letters are ruining my life !" "Letters all the 
morning." "Letters till luncheon." Her ac- 
quaintance was wdde, and her relations with 
the literary world of her day made it inevitable 
that she should be called upon for large epis- 
tolary labors; but added to this was the bur- 
den, already alluded to, of the letters which 
came to her from strangers. She was too 
kindly to ignore or neglect these, and she ex- 
pended much of her strength in answer to 
calls upon her which were unwarrantably 
made. Against the greater amount of literary 
work which she might have accomplished w4th 
the force thus generously expended, or the 
possible days which might have been added 
to her life, must in the great account be set 
the pleasure she gave to many, and the bal- 
ance is not for man to reckon. 

It is now w^ell known that the poems pub- 
lished over the name "Michael Field" were 



POET AND FRIEND 197 

written by Miss Bradley and Miss Edith 
Cooper in conjunction. To Miss Cooper, 
Mrs. Moulton, in the intimacy of a warm 
friendship which estabhshed itself between 
them, gave in loving familiarity the name 
"Amber Eyes." Many letters were exchanged, 
and from the correspondence of Miss Cooper 
may be quoted these fragments. 

Miss Cooper to Mrs. Moulton 

"We have just returned from Fiesole and 
Orvieto, and such names are poems. I had 
hoped to send you verses in The Academy, 
welded by Michael, on some Greek goddess 
in the British Museum. We very much care 
for the sympathy and interest of Americans." 

"I don't know any poet who is so spontane- 
ously true to himself as you are. I actually 
stand by you as I read, and see the harmoni- 
ous movement of your lips, and the half- 
deprecating, half-shadowed look in your eyes. 
. . . Your verses are like music. WTiat is 
this.? You are not able to sing.? Is this the 
effect of Boston on its ^vinter guest.? I can 
sympathize, for I have not w^ritten a line since 
our play was brought out last October." 

"The placid hills [in the Lake Country] 
make one love them as only Tuscan hills be- 



198 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON - 

sides can do. Some of the greatest ballads 
belong here. Wordsworth, Scott, and Burns, 
and many song-writers have given their pas- 
sion to this country-side, where one has such 
joy as the best dreams are made of." 

"In a cover somewhat like this paper in 
tone * Stephanie ' presents herself to you. 
. . . We have the audacity to think it is 
nearly as well woven as one of the William 
Morris carpets. We have taken ten years 
over the ten pages." 

On one of her visits to the cure at Wies- 
baden Mrs. Moulton made the acquaintance 
of Friedrich von Bodenstedt and visited at his 
house. She characterized the lyrics of the 
author of the "Lieder des Mirza-Schaffy " as 
"warm with the love of life and the life of 
love, and perfumed with the roses of the 
East." Her description of his personal ap- 
pearance is not without interest. 

"A tall, handsome, active man of seventy- 
two, w4th gray hair, ^vith eyes full, still, of the 
keen fire of youth; with the grand manner 
which belongs to the high-bred gentlemen of his 
generation, and the gift to please and to charm 
which is not always the dower even of a poet." 

Her return voyage from Europe in 1891 was a 
sorrowful one. Just before sailing she notes in 




Louisa Rehecca Ci.andlkr. Mrs. Moitlton's Mothki, 

Page 1<J9 



POET AND FRIEND 199 

her diary: "A sad day, — a telegram in the 
morning to say that mother was faihng." On 
the day before the steamer made land she 
writes : "A lovely day, but I am so anxious as 
to what news of my poor mother awaits me 
to-morrow"; and the first entry on shore is: 
"Landed to learn that my dear mother died 
last Monday, October 26, and was buried 
Tuesday. Oh, what it is to know that I shall 
never see her again !" 

The letters of Mrs. Moulton show through 
these years a growing feeling in regard to the 
mystery of death. So many of her friends had 
gone that the brevity of life was more and 
more deeply impressed upon her. In the cor- 
respondence of many of her friends are traces 
that her letters to them, not now available, 
had touched upon the questions to her so vital. 
Mrs. Maxwell (Miss M. E. Braddon) for in- 
stance, wrote : 

Mrs. Maxwell to Mrs. Moulton 

*'I have never believed in the gloomy and 
pitiless creed of the Calvinists. I believe every 
one is master of his destiny so far as perfect 
freedom of choice for good or evil. When we 
take the wrong road we do it perhaps in the 
blindness of passion, with eyes blind to conse- 
quences, minds darkened by selfish desires, by 



200 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

vanity, false ambitions, and by weakly yield- 
ing to bad influences." 

Canon Bell to Mrs. Moulton 

*'I hope you are seeing your way clearly to 
faith in God and His dear Son. A sure trust 
in our Heavenly Father is the only true con- 
solation in this world of change and sorrow. 
That brings peace." 

Lady Henry Somerset to Mrs. Moulton 

" I well understand what you say about look- 
ing onward. I think our eyes are turned that 
way when the steps of life lead us nearer to the 
journey's end with each setting sun. It is 
absorbingly interesting. Yes, I believe the 
love of God will be closest; and, in the last, 
victorious." 

What the words were to which these were 
replies may in part be gathered from the fol- 
lowing : 

Mrs. Moulton to William Winter 

DuKNHAM House, Chelsea, London, 
October 3, 1894. 

Dear Willie: I hope your lecture last 
night was a success, but it seems to me that 
all you do is. Yes, — how well I remember 
that seventieth-birthday breakfast to Dr. 



POET AND FRIEND 201 

Holmes. We sat very near each other, you 
and I, and I know how your words moved me, 
as well as how they moved Dr. Holmes. I 
felt his death very keenly, but I knew him far 
less than you did. To know him at all was to 
love him. How strange that you should have 
written of so many great pilgrims into the un- 
known. Thank God for your immortal hope. 
To me the outlook darkens as I draw nearer 
and nearer to the end. I am appalled by the 
immensity of the universe, and the nothing- 
ness of our little human atom among the in- 
finite worlds. But God knows what is to 
come. You are happier than most in the love 
that surrounds you. 

Thank you a thousand times for your 
dear letter. If I go to New^ York or you come 
to Boston, do not let us fail to meet, for the 
time in which earthly meetings are possible is 
short. Oh, how I hope there may be a life to 
come in which we shall find lost loves and 
hopes, and above all, lost possibilities. I 
think it is hardest of all to me to think what I 
might have been, might have done, and to be 
so utterly discontented with myself as I am. 
If you pray, say a prayer sometimes for one 
of the truest and fondest of your many friends, 
— this wanderer, 

L. C. M. 



202 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Without doubt the state of Mrs. Moulton's 
health had much to do with her apprehensions 
in regard to a future Hfe, and no one who was 
intimately associated with her could fail to 
know^ that these expressions of gloom and fore- 
boding, while entirely genuine at the moment 
of their utterance, convey an impression of 
her usual state of mind far more dark than was 
warranted by the truth. She was too sincerely 
interested in life and friendship, too much of 
her time and thought went to earnest work, 
however, for her to be in general either 
brooding or fearsome. The extracts given 
rather indicate her attitude of mind toward 
certain grave questions than toward life in 
general. 

The frankness of the folloT\ang letter from 
a woman who possessed remarkable powers 
which the public never fully appreciated is 
striking and refreshing: 

Mrs. Richard Henry Stoddard to Mrs. Moulton 

Mattapoisett, January 20. 

Dear Mrs. Moulton: Will you accept 
Mr. Stoddard's thanks for your pleasant notice 
through me ? I write nearly all his personal 
letters, I may say, nearly all except business 
letters. He was always averse to letter writing, 
and since his blindness this aversion is in- 



POET AND FRIEND 203 

creased; he hurts and angers many without 
meaning to do so. 

I think your first quotation a very poor one. 
The value of reviews or notices seems to me 
to be in quotations rather than in the ordinary 
criticism. In reading them I have often taken 
the poems in a new and striking light ; the 
medium — that is, the writer — has instructed 
and cleared my understanding. The happiest 
in regard to "The Lion's Cub" is the extract 
in The Critic. There has been no review of 
the book ; the nearest, so far, is the Spring- 
field Republican's and that is suggestive of a 
review. Mr. Stoddard considers the book a 
failure; I doubt if he ever collects again. 
Boyle O'Reilly once said that he saw Stoddard 
in Broadway and that no one noticed him ; 
"had he been in Boston," he continued, "on 
Washington Street, every man's hat would 
have been off to his white head." 

We are most delightfully set aside from the 
afternoon teas of the city, though the invita- 
tions chase us up here; the gray tranquil 
waters of our little bay, the solitary street, a 
dog occasionally going by, sometimes a man, 
is a pleasing contrast to 15th Street and Broad- 
way. We shall remain a few days longer and 
then go into our incongruous life again. If 
Lorimer were acting in Boston as he did for 



204 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

the past three winters, we should go home that 
way, but as he has not been there this season 
we shall not appear. 

Have you come across my friend, young Ed- 
ward McDowell, the composer, who has made 
such a success ? He and his wife are charmino;. 

And Miss , will you give her my re- 
gards when you see her? She has been not 
only attentive to me, but to my young sister, 
who followeth not in her aged sister's steps. 

Mr. Stoddard also wished to be remem- 
bered kindly to you. 

Yours truly, 

Elizabeth Stoddard. 

P. S. I meant to say while on "The Lion's 
Cub" that I never was so impressed with the 
gravity and dignity of S.'s verse, nor so clearly 
saw the profound melancholy of his mind. He 
really cares little for life. Ah, me ! 

E. S. 



CHAPTER VII 

1895-1900 

. . . The laurel and the praise 
But unto them, true helpers of their kind. 
Who, daily walking by imagined streams 
Rear fanes empyreal in Verse of Gold, — 
Rare architects of figments and of dreams. — Lloyd Mifflin. 

That jar of violet wine set in the air, 
That palest rose sweet in the night of life. 

— Stephen Phillips. 

I give you a day of my life; 

My uttermost gift and my best. — L. C. M. 

THE last decade of the century, to half 
of which the preceding chapter was 
given, stands out pre-eminently in Mrs. 
Moulton's life. Her fame, which had come to 
her so untainted by any self-seeking, and the 
abounding richness of friendship which so 
filled her life, friendship as sympathetic and 
cordial as it was widespread, made these years 
wonderful. Death and sorrow did bring into 
them a profound sadness, but even these 
brought her into closer touch with humanity 
and ripened her experiences. The recogni- 
tion which her art won gave her something 
much more satisfying than merely 

... to hear the nations praising her far ofif. 



206 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

And if to deal with literature is only to know- 
about the Eternal Beauty, while living and 
loving are in it and of it, she was indeed fortu- 
nate. In the life of no poet could be less of the 
abstraction of literary fame and more of the 
vitality of real existence. Her social life, both 
at home and abroad, was full of companion- 
ship sweet and genuine. For the mere cere- 
monial of life she cared little. Life was to her 
a thing too real, too precious, to make of it a 
spectacle. If her association was so largely 
with persons of distinction, it was because they 
interested her personally, and not because of 
the social position. That was incidental. 
Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells, speaking after the 
death of Mrs. Moulton, remarked: "I hon- 
ored her for her literary power; I loved her 
for herself. But especially I felt her refine- 
ment." Such refinement is incompatible with 
ostentation, and it was significant of her feel- 
ing on social matters that she copied in her 
note-book, with the remark, *'I agree with 
this entirely," this paragraph from Henry 
James' "Siege of London": 

*'I hate that phrase * getting into society.* 
I don't think one ought to attribute to one's 
self that sort of ambition. One ought to 
assume that one is in society — that one is 



POET AND FRIEND 207 

society — and to hold that if one has good 
manners, one has from the social point of view 
achieved the great thing. The rest regards 
others." 

While she was a woman of the world, she 
was not a worldly woman. She might easily 
have been presented at court during her many 
seasons in London, but she never cared to be. 
She not infrequently met the Princess Louise 
and other members of the Royal Family, and 
her own comings and goings were chronicled 
in the London press. She was the guest and 
the intimate friend of titled persons in England 
and of those first in American society ; but all 
this never altered her simple and utterly un- 
affected cordiality toward those who were of 
no social prominence whatever. *'The reason 
for her popularity," wrote Miss Josephine 
Jenkins very justly, "is summed up in the 
sympathy of her nature, which expands with 
loving and often helpful solicitude to those 
seeking encouragement, precisely as it expands 
toward those having attained some noble dis- 
tinction. Not every human being is endowed 
with this genius for appreciation." 

Mrs. Moulton wrote to Coulson Kernahan 
on one occasion: "I do wonder who spoke of 
me as *a woman, above all things, of society.' 



208 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Nothing; could be more remote from truth. I 
simply will not go to balls; I don't care for 
large receptions, though I do go to them 
sometimes; I enjoy dinners, if I am by the 
right person. But I refuse ten invitations to 
every one I accept, and the thing I most and 
really care for in all the world is the love of 
congenial friends and quiet, intimate tete-a- 
tete with them. The superficial, external side 
of life is nothing to me. I long for honest and 
true love as a child set down in a desert might 
long for the mother's sheltering arms." 

On New Year's day, 1895, she wrote, with 
that curious periodicity which characterized 
the opening of so many years for her, a sonnet 
entitled "Oh, Traveller by Unaccustomed 
Ways," fine and strong, and with haunting 
lines such as : 

Searcher among new worlds for pleasures new. — ... 
Some wild, sweet fragrance of remembered days. 

The sestet is as follows: 

I send my message to thee by the stars — 
Since other messenger I may not find 

Till I go forth beyond these prisoning bars. 
Leaving this memory-haunted world behind. 

To seek thee, claim thee, wheresoe'er thou be. 

Since Heaven itself were empty, lacking thee. 

The letters of this time are as usual full of 
allusions to Mrs. Moulton's work, and are 



POET AND FRIEND 209 

as usual from a very wide circle of literary 
friends. Sir Frederick Pollock expresses his 
appreciation of her book upon Marston, and 
the pleasure he and Lady Pollock anticipate 
in seeing her in London next season. J. T. 
Trowbridge writes to her that the technique of 
her songs and sonnets "is well-nigh faultless, 
and their melody never fails to respond to the 
tender feeling by which they are inspired." 
Lord de Tabley thanks her for a notice of his 
work, "and particularly," he adds, "for putting 
me in such good company as that of William 
Watson, whom I greatly admire." Sir Lewis 
Morris writes cordially, and reminds her of 
their "pleasant lunches at Lord Haylston's." 
Marie Corelli expresses her gratitude for 
pleasant things which Mrs. Moulton has said 
of her in a letter to Mrs. Coulson Kernahan. 
Other letters were from Miss Bayley (Edna 
Lyall), Andrew Lang, Rose Kingsley, Lady 
Temple, Stephen Phillips, the Hon. Florence 
Henniker. If, as Emerson says, "a letter is a 
spiritual gift," these gifts were showered upon 
Mrs. Moulton. 

William Watson to Mrs. Moulton 

Dear Mrs. Moulton: One of the most 
generous recognitions of my early poems came 
from your pen. I wished then to express my 

14 



210 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

gratitude. I look forward to the pleasure of 
making your acquaintance. I am touched by 
your kind sympathy, and I know that you 
gladden all our group of friends. It is no 
ordinary thanks I owe you for your generous 
and delightful criticism. I have to thank you, 
already, for my best appreciation in America. 
You do not know how grateful I am to the 
first woman in America (and almost the first 
human being) who gave me hearty and in- 
spiring praise. Your poems add to my store 
of beautiful things, and I do not prize them 
the less because some of their qualities are 
my own despair. ^Vhen your letter came, 
that article which I call my conscience, and 
which I wear less for use than for ornament, 
gave me no peace. Yet the outward parts of 
life were to blame rather than I, their victim. 
I had been moving, and giving the Post 
Office the trouble of one who inherits a wan- 
dering tendency. I hope you will permit me 
to call upon you when next you are in London, 
and I am, dear Mrs. Moulton, 
Sincerely yours, 

William Watson. 

To a friend Mr. Watson wrote of Mrs. 
Moulton: "Her letters show her absolute 
goodness of heart, which is worth all other 
human quahties put together." 



POET AND FRIEND 211 

Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett writes 
characteristically of that inner inspirer which 
she calls her "Fairy." 

Mrs. Burnett to Mrs. Moulton 

*'. . . I am so glad you like my story. . . . 
It was not I who said 'Human beings can do 
anything if they set their minds to it'; it was 
that beloved thing which has said things for 
me all my life. Sometimes I call it 'The 
Fairy,' but I think it must be a kind of splen- 
did spirit. It is so strong, it is so good to me, 
and I do so love it. When I said that thing it 
seemed to make something waken within me. 
I began to say it to myself, and to believe it. 
Only thus could I have finished the story, and 
this makes me know it is true. ... I have 
sometimes thought the thing I had to give is 
nearly always part of a story, some note of love, 
or message that rings clear. I don't ask it should 
be a loud note, only that some one shall hear 
it and remember. The fact that you have 
heard, makes the story a success, so far as I 
am concerned. As for giving, you give al- 
ways. I have seen that. You give of gentle- 
ness and kindness and all things that help. 
Your hands are full of things to give." 

Just before Mrs. Moulton's sailing in the 
spring of 1895 a breakfast was given to her by 



212 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

a group of her friends, at which the decoration 
was very prettily all of mountain laurel. In 
the centre of the table was a basket of green 
osiers filled with the faintly pink kalmia, and 
this color-scheme was carried out in the 
menu-cards, the embroidered centre-piece, the 
candle-shades, and in the Venetian glass with 
which the table was furnished. It is to this 
breakfast that Mrs. Blake alludes in the little 
note which follows : 

Mrs. John G. Blake to Mrs. Moulton 

Dear Mrs. Moulton: Among all the 
laurels which are being laid before your con- 
quering feet, will you take my little flower of 
good-will and congratulations ? The sonnets 
are exquisite, so are you always to 
Your affectionate 

M. E. B. 

In 1896 was published "Lazy Tours," Mrs. 
Moulton's most important book in prose. 
This volume records her impressions in her 
wanderings in Spain, in Southern Italy, in 
France, and in Switzerland. It is a delightful 
mosaic of bits about people and places, of 
glimpses of Rome, of Florence, of Paris, of the 
German "cures," and of pleasant experiences 
of all sorts. The book is dedicated to Sir 



POET AND FRIEND 213 

Bruce and Eady Scton, "The well-beloved 
friends iind lre(]uent hosts of this lazy tour- 
ist." The dedication is as aj)propriate as it is 
pleasantly phrased, for the Setons were not 
only among the closest of Mrs. Moul ton's 
English friends, hut with them she luid done 
a great deal of journeying. The book is 
charmingly vivid, and is a pleasant companion 
for the traveller in the places with which it 
deals. Mrs. Moulton neither was nor claimed 
to be an ex[)ert critic of j)ainting and scul|)ture, 
but her artistic taste res})on(le(l sensitively to 
what was best, and she recorded her feelings 
with a frank enthusiasm and a wonderful 
freshness. 

Arlo Bates, in acknowledging a gift copy of 
*'Lazy Tours" wrote: "I thank you for 
*Lazy Tours.' It is done witli a touch not 
only light and delicate, but strangely gentle. 
It is written with the experience of a woman 
and the enthusiasm of a girl." In another 
note of Mr. Bates', belonging to this time, are 
the remarks : 

"Friendship is about the only real thing in 
humanity." 

"The few of us who, in this muse-forgotten 
age, still care for real poetry, are to be con- 
gratulated no less." 



214 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

The sculptor Greenough wrote: "Verily, 
your 'Lazy Tours' are a rebuke to industry, 
for it has woven a magic carpet, as that of the 
'Arabian Nights,' only you transport the 
reader, in every sense of the word. . . . What 
excellent prose you poets write when you try." 
The critics were all agreed, and the verdict of 
the public endorsed that of Mrs. Moulton's 
friends and of the reviewers. The book had 
precisely that lightness of touch which is 
perennially charming, and which perhaps is 
due equally to literary expertness and to in- 
nate good taste. 

The usual summer abroad, full of social 
experiences, followed; and then the winter 
in Boston with the crowded Friday receptions. 
A letter which belongs to this winter is full of 
a lightness and kindliness characteristic of 
the writer. 

James Whitcomb Riley to Mrs. Moulton 

"... You, after months and months of 
barbarous silence, are asking me why I have 
not written ! Well, I '11 answer in my artless- 
ness and most truthfully tell you that my last 
letter (and a really appealing one) meeting 
with no response whatever, I just had con- 
cluded that I 'd win highest favor in your esti- 
mate by not writing. So I quit writing, and 




WiLI.IA.M U. MOULTON 

Paije 215 



POET AND FRIEND 215 

went to pouting, — this latter so persistently 
indulged in that my previously benignant 
features now look as though they were being 
east back on my very teeth, so to speak, by a 
tawdry, wavery, crinkly looking-glass in the last 
gasp of a boarding-house. But since your 
voice of yesterday, the eyes of me are lit again, 
and the whole face beams like radiant sum- 
mer time. No wonder you continue in indif- 
ferent health. It 's a judgment on you for 
your neglect of me. Now you '11 begin to im- 
prove. And you can get into perfect health 
by strictly maintaining this rigorous course 
of writing to me. Heroic treatment, of a 
truth! . . ." 

One of the entries in the diary of the winter 
reads : 

*' Could hardly get to the Browning Society, 
where I read 'A Toccata of Galuppi's.' Mr. 
Moulton seemed interested about the reading, 
and I read him the 'Toccata' after dinner, 
and other poems. A beautiful evening." 

Strangely enough this was Mr. Moulton's 
last evening of being in health. The next day 
he was taken ill, and on February 19, 1898, he 
passed into "the Hfe more abundant." The 
funeral service was read by the Rev. E. Win- 
chester Donald, rector of Trinity, and Mrs. 



216 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Moulton more than once spoke of the kind- 
ness and sympathy which he showed to her at 
this time. She wrote in her diary: "Dr. 
Donald called; he is, it seems to me, a nobly 
good man." Her daughter was with her, and 
her many friends were about her. Numerous 
were the letters of condolence, and they were 
full of the genuine feeling which could be called 
out only by one who was herself so ready and 
quick to respond to the sorrow^s of others. 

In the summer following Mr. Moulton's 
death Mrs. Moulton remained in America. 
Her life was saddened and cumbered with the 
cares needful in business matters, and on the 
last day of the year she wrote in her diary: 
"This sad year which is now ending — how 
strange a year it has been for me. Mr. Moul- 
ton died in February and changed all. I have 
done nothing, enjoyed nothing. With 1899 
I must turn over a new leaf, or give up life 
and all its uses, altogether." In this mood it 
was natural that her predisposition to brood 
upon the problem of death should reassert it- 
self. She writes to WiUiam Winter: "No, — 
my dread of death does not seem to me to be 
physical, for it is not the pain of death that I 
ever think of. I hate the idea of extinction, 
but I could reconcile myself to that ; . . • but 
what I dread most is the to-morrow of death. 



POET AND FRIEND 217 

— the loneliness of the unclothed soul." And 
again: "For myself, I have an unutterable 
and haunting horror of going out into the 
dark. ... I always wish I might die at the 
same moment with some well beloved friend, 
so that hand and hand we might go into the 
mystery." 

Her literary work, however, continues. She 
said from time to time that she could not write, 
and that she should never write a line again ; 
but the poetic instinct was strong, and as- 
serted itself in its own time and way. In a 
letter to a friend she remarks in passing: 
"The Century has just come with my poem, 
'A Rose Pressed in a Book,' and it seems to 
me to read pretty well." The lyric to which 
she modestly alludes as reading "pretty well" 
is beautifully characteristic of some of her 
choicest poetic qualities: easy and seemingly 
unconscious mastery of form, delicacy of 
touch, charming melody, and sincerity of 
emotion. 

Always her correspondence goes on. 

T. B. Aldrich to Mrs. Moulton 

. "Some day I must get you to tell me about 
Andrew Lang. One night last winter as I 
sat reading one of his books a kind of ghost, 



^18 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

distinct, elusive, rose before me. Out of this 
inipression grew my 'Broken Music.'" 

In allusion to his much discussed "Modern 
Love," George Meredith writes: 

George Meredith to Mrs. Moulton 

*'You are like the northern tribes of the 
Arabs, in that what you love you love wholly 
and without ceasing. This poem has been 
more roundly abused than any other of my 
much-castigated troop. You help me to think 
that they are not born offenders, antipathetic 
to the human mind. Americans who first gave 
me a reputation for the writing of novels will 
perhaps ultimately take part in the admission 
that I can write verse. They may thus carry 
a reluctant consent in England, when I no 
longer send out my rhyming note for revision. 
I have been taught, at least, to set no store 
upon English opinion in such matters. I 
would thank you, but gratitude is out of place. 
There is a feeling hard to verbalize." 

Mrs. Moulton to Lloyd Mifflin 

*'It is five days since I received your 'Slopes 
of Helicon,' enriched by your kind inscription. 
I have been too ill to write; but I will no 
longer postpone the pleasure of telling you 



POET AND FRIEND 219 

how deliglited I am to liavc your charming 
book. I have ah-eady read enough to know 
that the book will be an abiding pleasure. 
You are as delightful a lyrist as you are a 
sonneteer, and I could not give you liigher 
praise. Both the sonnets and lyrics in this 
volume charm me." 

**. . . This morning, looking over a shelf 
of books that have accumulated during my 
absence, — as books are never forwarded to 
me, — I find your ' Fields of Dawn,' and also 
* Lyrics,' by J. H. Mifflin, for both of which I 
want to thank you at once. I have a real 
pleasure to look forward to, for I love your 
sonnets. Am I right in supposing 'J. II. M.' 
to be your father, and that you are a poet by 
inheritance ? . . ." 

"I am sending a hurried note to tell you 
how entirely I agree with you about the 
demand for *' cheerful poetry." 

"It is worth writing a book to have written 
the line, 

"Made eminent by death, 

in that noble poem, 'Peace to the Brave.' 
The poem entitled 'Herbert Spencer' makes 
me wonder whether you feel that assurance 
of the future which he certainly did not feel. 



220 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Lloyd Mifflin to Mrs. Moulton 

". . .It is very uplifting, as you say in 
New England, to have such a genuine letter 
as yours. You read a book as I do, through 
at once. No one has said that my mind 
inclines to visions like Blake's, but I see 
visions. I used to sit and hold the pen and 
feel it hovering about, becoming nearer and 
nearer, till suddenly it came, the complete 
sonnet. I merely recorded it then. This 
was always wonderful to me. Where do 
they come from ? Not death itself, to say 
nothing of our earth, can keep a born poet 
from writing. I can write a better poem 
about sunset by not seeing it. . . ." 

James Whitcomh Riley to Mrs. Moulton 
"... Very slightly changing R. L. S.'s line, 

"This be the verse which ye grave for me, 
Home he is where he longed to be; 

and very thankful I am to be at home again. 
True, the mother is away, the old father, too, 
and a sister, and a brother ; but they all seem to 
be here still, with the happy rest of us, — for we 
all believe, thank God. iVnd you must take 
this for answer to your very last question, for 
I do feel that I know. I know likewise why 



POET AND FRIEND 221 

fuller assurance has been withheld from us, 
lest knowing that, not one of all God's chil- 
dren but would be hurrying to Him ere His 
own good time. . . . Always your books are 
near at hand. May I tell you that I think 
the sonnet is your true voice ? Yours is the 
deep, strong utterance which belongs, with 
the soul-cry in it, as individual to yourself 
as Mrs. Browning's to herself. Somewhere 
we are to talk poetry together sometime ! 
. . . Of my book, 'A Child's World,' I 
venture to send you Mr. Howells' printed 
blessing, ... so delightfully characteristic (I 
think) of his very happiest way of saying things. 
And, oh ! but I am gloating over a supernal 
letter from the Archangel Aldrich ! Truly with 
hurtling praise and God-speed the heavenly 
battlements have loosened on me. ..." 

From the same 

*'Has it been, and is it being, a beautiful 
Christmas season to you ? for I have been so 
praying, though vexing you with no line of 
it in ink. And I've seen two new poems of 
yours, and they testify to your loyal love of 
this world of ours; so I know at least you 
can't be happier till you get to Heaven wdth 
no good word or gift forgotten, and such 
profusion ! Since my return home I 've been 



222 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

mostly working on pyramids of matter accu- 
mulated since my taking to the road. But 
last night I was struck wdth a real thought, 
while I was off guard, so to speak. So I've 
gone to work on that, and I '11 send you the 
result, if I ever overtake it. . . . Lor ! but 
don't praise unexpected hit the very crazybone 
of vanity !" 

From the same 

*'How beautiful your new poems are ! Oh, 
yes ! Even to vaguely question your Divine 
Inspirer's ultimate intent ! . . . Sometimes I 
even smilingly think that he Has given you 
that haunting doubt here that your delight 
may be all the more ineffable a glory when you 
find His throne more real a fact than this 
first world of ours." 

Among the pleasant friendships which came 
into a life whose entire texture seemed woven 
of friendship and song, w^as that with Coulson 
Kernahan, who, though one of the younger 
men of letters in England, had already made 
a recognized place. His warmly responsive 
nature made the two especially sympathetic, 
and they were alike in their devotion to litera- 
ture. After the vanishing of the "Marston 
group," Mrs. Moulton's most intimate Lon- 
don circle came to comprise Sir Bruce and 



POET AND FRIEND 223 

Lady Seton, with whom she stayed frequently 
at Durham House, Mr. Kernahan, Mrs. 
Campbell-Praed, and Herbert E. Clarke. Mr. 
Kernahan's acquaintance with Mrs. Moulton 
began from a critique on *' Swallow Flights" 
which lie had written for the Fortnightly. 
In it he had said: 

" No one who looks upon life with earnest 
eyes can fail to be touched by the passionate 
human cry which rings from Mrs. Moulton's 
poems. No one whose ear Is attuned to catch 
the wail that Is to be heard in the maddest, 
merriest music of the violin, to whom the 
sound of wind and sea at midnight is like that 
of innumerable lamentations ; no one who, 
in the movement of a multitude of human 
beings — be they marching to the bounding 
music of fife and drum, or hurrying to witness 
a meeting of the starving unemployed — no 
one who in all these hears something of 'the 
still, sad music of humanity,' can read her 
verses unstirred.'* 

Mr. Kernahan had also emphasized — Mrs. 
Moulton herself thought somewhat unduly 
— the strain of sadness in her poems ; and 
had he known her personally at the time he 
wrote, he would surely not have called her 
"world-weary and melancholy." The point 



224 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

was one often made by critics, and has been 
alluded to in an earlier chapter. Partly the 
melancholy note was due to environment, 
but more to temperament. Mrs. Moulton 
almost at the beginning had edited a "gift- 
book" and the fact is significant of the literary 
fashions of her youth. The "annuals" and 
"gift-books" of the second quarter of the 
nineteenth century were redolent of a sort of 
pressed-rose sadness, a sort of faded-out 
reminiscence of belated Byi'onism; a richly 
passionate gloom of spirit was held to be 
necessary to lyric inspiration. By this con- 
vention Mrs. Moulton was undoubtedly af- 
fected, although by no means to such an 
extent as was Edgar Allan Poe. With her 
the cause of the minor cadence was chiefly a 
temperament which gave a sad quality to her 
singing as nature has put a plaintive timbre 
into the notes of certain birds. In writing 
to Mr. Kernahan about his article, she said: 
"I always hear the minor chords in nature's 
music; after the summer, the autumn; after 
youth, age; after life, death. I happened 
yesterday to close a poem: 

" O June, dear month of sunshine and of flowers. 
The affluent year will hold you not again; 
Once, only once, can youth and love be ours, 
And after that the autumn and the rain. 



POET AND FRIEND 225 

Is it not- true?" Yet she assured him that 
she was "often gay." 

The numerous letters of Mrs. Moulton to 
Mr. Kernahan were intimate and full of 
details of business in regard to publication, 
with personal matters relating to friends and 
the like, but through them all runs a thread 
of comment on literature and life. 

"I am simply enchanted with the new book 
William Morris has printed for Wilfrid Blunt, 
'The Love Lyrics and Songs of Proteus.'" 

"Yes, I did like that one line in Christina 
Rossetti's poem: ^ 

"... half carol and half cry ; 
but the rest of it is not good enough for her. " 

"I have had many violets sent me this year, 
but far the most fragrant were a bunch left 
for me to-day with a card on which was written : 

" Since one too strange to risk intrusion 
Would dare rebuke, nor meet confusion, 
Yet fain would — failing long to meet you — 
With gentle words and memories greet you. 
Sweet Mistress of the Triolet, 
Admit, I pray, a violet." 

"I am reading, or rather rereading Rossetti's 
sonnet sequence, 'The House of Life.' How 

15 



226 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

unequal are the sonnets, — some of them so 
beautiful they fairly thrill one's soul with their 
charm, but others seem whimsical and far 
fetched. On the other hand, how glorious, 
how like a full chord of music is, for instance, 
*The Heart's Compass,' and the sestet of 
'Last Fire,' and that magnificent sonnet, 
'The Dark Glass.'" 

"I had a letter this morning from a far-off 
stranger who tells me that her heart keeps 
time to my poems. ... I am expecting my 
beloved Mrs. Spofford to-day. . . . No sweeter 
soul than she lives on this earth." 

"Recently I sent a rhyme called 'A Whis- 
per to the Moon, ' to The Inde'pendent, and in 
accepting it Bliss Carman writes: *I like it, 
and that line 

" * She is thy kindred, and fickle art thou, 

is immense. Lines with the lyric quality of 
that are imperishable. Quite apart from its 
meaning — its cold meaning — it is poetry. 
It floods the heart. It carries all before it. 
There is no stopping it. It is like the open- 
ing of the gates of the sea. You often write 
such lines.' The line does not seem to me 
at all worth such praise, but all the same the 
praise pleased me. How lovely it is to have 




Loi ISK CHANDLKK MoUI.TON' 

Far/e 227 



POET AND FRIEND 227 

people single out some special phrase to care 
for!" 

"Louise Guiney and I are looking over my 
poems together. Oh, I wish there were more 
variety in them. They are good (I hof>e and 
think) in form, but they are, almost all, the 
cry of my heart for the love that I long for, 
or its protest against the death that I fear. 
Ah, well, I can only be myself.'- 

In this year appeared Mrs. Moulton's 
third volume of poems, "At the Wind's Will," 
the title being taken from Rossetti's " Wood- 
spurge" : 

I had walked on at the wind's will, — 
I sat now, for the wind was still. 

Of it Mrs. Spofford said: 

"Mrs. Moulton's last volume of poems, 
*At the Wind's Will,' fitly crowns the literary 
achievement of the century. It is poetry at 
high- water mark. Her work exhibited in 
previous volumes has given her a rank among 
the foremost poets of the world, and much 
of the work in 'At the Wind's Will' exceeds 
in grasp and in surrender, in strength and in 
beauty, anything she has hitherto published. " 

So the year wore to a close. Her last 
record for December in her diary reads : "Now 



228 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

this year of 1899 goes out, — a year in which 
I have accompHshed nothing, — gone back, I 
fear, in every way. God grant 1900 may be 
better." In part this was the expression of 
the melancholy natural to ill health, but it 
was a characteristic cry from one always too 
likely to underrate herself. Surely the prayer 
was granted, for the year 1900 gave her again 
a spring in Rome and Florence, and was 
filled with rich and significant experiences. 



CHAPTER VIII 
1900-1906 

. . . One in whom 
The spring-tide of her childish years 
Hath never lost its sweet perfume. 
Though knowing well that life hath room 
For many blights and many tears. — Lowell. 

In my dreams you are beside me, — 

Still I hear your tender tone; 
And your dear eyes light my darkness 

Till I am no more alone: 
For with memories I am haunted. 

And the silence seems to beat 
With the music of your talking, 

And the coming of your feet. — L. C. M. 

THE diary during the early months of the 
year which opened the new century re- 
cords as often before many kindnesses 
in the form of reading for various objects : 

"Went In evening to read for the Rev. 
Mr. Shields, of South Boston." 

"In the evening read for the College Club. 
Mrs. Howe presided. The other readers 
were Dr. Hale, Dr. Ames, Colonel HIgglnson, 



230 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

J. T. Trowbridge, Judge Grant, and Nathan 
Haskell Dole." 

"Read for the Young Men's Christian 
Association. I read 'In Arcady, ' *The Name 
on a Door,' and *A June Song,' of my own 
verses; then my paper on the Marstons, en- 
titled 'Five Friends.' People seemed pleased." 

Among her numerous generous acts w^ere to 
be reckoned the many times when, T\dthout 
regard to herself, she assisted at readings or 
gave a reading entirely by herself. 
On February 19, the entry is : 

"Two years ago this day Mr. Moulton 
passed out of life. It was my first thought 
this morning, and the sadness of it has been 
with me all day." 

Mr. Moulton had always been to her a 
tower of strength. Few men were more 
highly esteemed by those who knew him, or 
were more deserving of esteem. He was 
a man of flawless integrity and the highest 
sense of honor; a man of \agorous intellect, 
of clear and definite intellectual grasp, and of 
a generous and kindly nature. He was not 
himself fond of society, but he was proud of 
his wife's success, and ministered to her 
tastes for travel and social life. His sympathy 



POET AND FRIEND 231 

with the Hterary Hfe was genuine and strong, 
and his service to clean and wholesome 
journalism in his editorial work gave him a 
lasting claim upon public gratitude, had he 
chosen to assert it. Upon his sterling worth 
and fine character Mrs. Moulton had always 
been able to depend, and life without the 
consciousness of his presence in the home 
was a thing different and sadder. 

In a letter written about this time Mrs. 
Moulton again touches upon the old question 
of social struggle: 

"I agree with you as to the inanity of 
struggle for social prominence. How fine is 
the passage you quote from Emerson: 'My 
friends come to me unsought. The great 
God Himself gave them to me.' That is the 
way I feel. Any social struggle seems to me 
so little worth while. It is worth while to 
know the people who really interest one, — 
but the others ! It is always climbing ladders, 
and there are always other ladders to climb, 
and one never gets to the top. And then, 
what will it be if there is an ' after death ' ? I 
wonder.^ Will there be social ambitions, — 
the desire to get ahead there ? It almost 
seems as if there must be, if there is the con- 
tinuity of individual existences, for what 



232 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

could change people's desires and tendencies 
all at once?" 

From various letters to the friend to whom 
this is written, to whom she wrote often, may 
be put together here a few extracts. The 
letters were seldom dated, and it is hardly 
possible to tell exactly when each was written, 
but the exact sequence is not of importance. 

"And what do you think {entre nous) I have 
been asked to do ? To go to Cambridge, 
England, with a party of friends who have 
included Mme. Blavatsky, and they are to have 
some brilliant receptions given them there by 
the occult folk, or those interested. But I 
declined." 

"Mr. goes about asking every one if 

he has read 'The Story of My Heart,' by 
Jeffries, which is his latest enthusiasm. After 
being asked till I was ashamed of saying no, 
I got the book and read it, finding it the 
most haunting outcry of pessimism imagin- 
able. When one has read it one feels in the 
midst of a Godless, hopeless world, where 
nature is hostile, and the animal kingdom 
alien, and man alone with his destiny, — a 
destiny that menaces and appalls him. It is 
a too powerful book. Jeffries makes one 



POET AND FRIEND 233 

feel, for the moment, that all the happy people 
are happy only because insensate, and are 
madly dancing on volcanoes." 

"Austin Dobson says: *I have always 
admired your sonnets, — a thing I can never 
manage ; but how you do take all Gallometry 
to be your province ! ! Wliat are we, poor 
slaves to canzonets and serenades, to do next ? * 
Very pleasant of him." 

"Last Saturday the Boyle O'Reilly monu- 
ment was unveiled, and I was chosen to crown 
it with a laurel wreath. It was a wonderful 
occasion ; and President Capen, of Tufts Col- 
lege, gave the most eloquent eulogy to which 
I ever listened." 

"My life is not the beautiful life you think, 
but it is my soul's steadfast purpose to make 
it all that you believe it already is. Nothing 
is of any real consequence save to live up to 
your very highest ideal. In criticism I made 
up my mind, long ago, that one should be like 
Swedenborg's angels, who sought to find the 
good in everything. Of course, really poor 
things must be condemned — or what / think 
is better — boycotted ; but I do not like what 
is harsh, prejudiced, one-sided. I would see 
my possible soul's brother in every man — 
which all means that I am an optimist." 



234 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

"Can you tell me what Henry James means 
by his story, *The Private Life'? Is it an 
allegory or what? I never saw anything so 
impossible to understand." 

*'You speak of the 'close and near friend- 
ships' you have made in your few weeks 
in Florence, — 'friendships for a lifetime.' 
That is delightful, only I can't make friend- 
ships with new people easily; so if I went I 
should not have that pleasure." 

"... Before I rose this morning, a special 
messenger came from the Secretary of the 
Women Writers' Club (which is giving a 
magnificent dinner to-night at which Mrs. 
Humphry Ward presides). Miss Blackburne, 
the 'Hon. Secretary,' had only heard of my 
being in London this morning, so she at once 
sent a messenger to invite me. She entreated 
me to come ; said she wanted me to sit at the 
head of one of the tables, and preside over 
that table, etc., etc. She sent a most distin- 
guished list of guests, and oh, I did want to 
go — but I felt so ill I dared not try to go, 
and I sent an immediate refusal. Many of 
the authors whom I would like to meet will 
be among the guests. ..." 

"Here is the little screed . . . about Mrs. 
Browning. The description was given me 



POET AND FRIEND 235 

by an English lady who saw Mrs. Browning 
very often during Mrs. B.'s last visit to Rome. 
To her such rumors as (falsely, I am per- 
suaded) have connected Mr. Browning's name 
with that of another marriage would have 
seemed an impossible impertinence. Indeed, 
when one knows — as I happen to know — 
that Mr. Browning was asked to furnish ,some 
letters and some data about Mrs. Browning's 
life for Miss Zimmern (who had been requested 
to write about her for the Famous Women 
Series of Biographies) and refused because he 
could not bring himself to speak in detail 
of the past which had been so dear, or to share 
the sacred letters of his wafe with the public, 
it hardly seems that he can be contemplating 
the offer of the place she, his 'moon of 
poets,' held in his life, to another." 

In the "little screed" alluded to was this 
description of Mrs. Browning, given in the 
words of the friend: 

*'No, she was not what people call beauti- 
ful ; but she was more and better. I can see 
her now, as she lay there on her sofa. I 
never saw her sitting up. She was always 
in white. She wore white dresses, trimmed 
with white lace, with white, fleecy shawls 
wrapped round her, and her dark brown hair 



236 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

used to be let down and fall all about her like 
a veil. Her face used to seem to me some- 
thing already not of the earth — it was so 
pale, so pure, and with great dark eyes that 
gleamed like stars. Then her voice was so 
sweet you never wanted her to stop speaking, 
but it was also so low you could only hear it 
by listening carefully." 

'"Was Mr. Browning there.?' 

*' Oh, yes, and he used to watch her as one 
watches who has the most precious object 
in the whole world to keep guard over. He 
looked out for her comfort as tenderly as a 
woman. 

" I think there never was another marriage 
like that; a marriage that made two poet 
souls one forever. Don't you notice how 
Browning always speaks of finding again the 
'soul of his soul'.? It was easy enough to 
see that that was just what she was. And 
the boy was there, too, a little fellow, with 
long golden hair, and I remember how quietly 
he used to play, how careful he was not to 
disturb his mother. Sometimes he used to 
stand for a long time beside her, with her 
'spirit-small hand,' as her husband called 
it, just pla}dng with his curls. I wonder if 
he can have known that she was going away 
from him so soon." 



POET AND FRIEND 237 

From various letters of this time of and to 
Mrs. Moulton may be taken such bits as 
these : 

Mrs. Moulton to Elihu Vedder 

**It was such a pleasure to me in my present 
loneliness to have a good talk with you last 
night, and I have been thinking of what you 
said. You would like a big fortune that 
you might have leisure to fulfil your dreams, 
but what if you had the fortune and not the 
dreams ? I would a million times rather be 
you than any capitalist alive. It seems to 
me that to do work as the few great men in 
the world have, that must live, is the supreme 
joy. When you are dust the world will 
adore the wonder and majesty and beauty of 
your pictures. It seems to me that I would 
starve willingly in an attic, like Chatter- 
ton, to leave to the wide future one such 
legacy. " 

Walter Pater to Mrs. Moulton 

*'I read very little contemporary poetry, 
finding a good deal of it a little falsetto. I 
found, however, in your elegant and musical 
volume a sincerity, a simplicity, which stand 
you as constituting a cachet, a distinct note." 



238 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Mrs. 3IouIfo)i to Ladij Lindsay 

"I am reading, with very unusual interest, 
* Blake of Oriel,' by x\deline Sargent. It is 
a story of fate and of heredity, which sets one 
thinking and questioning. ... Is fate also 
to be complicated by the curse of evil inherit- 
ance .^ Oh, is it fair to give life to one vAi\\ 
such an inheritance of evil, and then condemn 
the sinner for what he does ? Is it .^ ... Is 
it a lo\dng God who creates men fo^ekno^^^ng 
that they will commit spiritual suicide.^ . . . 
Are people sinners who are doomed by hered- 
ity to sin.P" 

Arihur CJiristopJicr Benson to Mrs. MoiiJtou, 

''Thank you for what you say of my 'Arthur 
Hamilton.' It is deeply gratifying to me that 
the book has ever so slightly interested you. 
As for the difficulties of the hero, I suppose 
they are the eternal difficulties. It was like 
my impudent youth to think that to no one 
else had the same problem been so unjustly 
presented before, and to rush wildly into a 
tourney. " 

The summer of 1900 ^Irs. Moulton passed 
abroad, going before her London visit for 
the spring in Italy. She re\asited familar 
haunts in Rome and Florence, and again 



POKT AM>> I'lilEM) 2f3f) 

was steeped In Uie enehantrrjf'fif, of Italy. 
In Rome sfie loved (;s[>eelally the gardens of 
tfje Villa Ludovisi ; and indeed, sornetlilng in 
the soh^rnn s[>ell she felt in the Ktr;rnal City 
appealed espeeially to lier nature. 'J'lie roses 
and the ruins, the antlrpie and the modern; 
ehnrehes and altars and temples, and modern 
studios and soeiety, — eaeh, in turn, attracted 
her. She passed hours in the Vatican galleries ; 
she was fond of driving on the Pineian \n the 
late afternoon ; she took a child's joy in the 
festas; she found delight in the works grow- 
ing under the hand of artists. Of a visit to 
the studio of Mr. Story she related: "J was 
looking at a nohle statue of Saul, and tliis, 
recalling to me tljc 'Saul' of J^rownlng, led 
me to speak of tlie dead poet. Mr. Story 
then told me of liIs own last meeting with 
Browning, which was at Asolo. It was hut 
a short time before Browning's death, and the 
two old friends were talking over all sorts 
of intimate things, and finally Mr. Story 
entered his carriage to drive away. Brown- 
ing, who had bade him good-bye and turnerJ 
away, suddenly came back, and reached his 
hand into the carriage, grasping that of Story, 
and hjoking into the sculptor's eyes exclaimed, 
'PMends for forty years ! Forty years without 
a break.' Then witli a last good-bye he 



240 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

turned away, and the two friends never met 
again." 

After the London visit, Mrs. Moulton went 
for the cure at Aix-les-Bains, perhaps as 
much for the delightful excursions of the 
neighborhood as in any hope of help for her 
almost constant ill-health. Thence she went 
in September to Paris, still in the full glory of its 
Exposition year. While in Paris she received 
from Professor Meiklejohn the comments 
upon her latest volume, "i^tthe Wind's Will." 
He had fallen into the custom of going over 
her poems carefully, and of sending her his 
notes of admiration. "I still maintain," he 
wrote her on this occasion, "that your broth- 
ers are the Elizabethan lyrists, Shakespeare, 
Fletcher, Vaughan." Some of the comments 
were these: 

*'In 'When Love is Young,' the line 

" Time has his will of every man, 

is in the strong style of the sixteenth century. 
"I think the 'Dead Men's Holiday' martial 
and glorious. 

" And the keen air stung all their lips like wine, 

is the kind of hne when Nature has taken the 
pen into her own hand. 



POET AND FRIEND 241 

**What an exquisite stanza is this in 'The 
Summer's Queen ' : 

" You sow the fields with lilies — wake the choir 
Of summer birds to chorus of delight; 
Yours is the year's deep rapture — yours the fire 
That burns the West, and ashers in the night. 

**The line 
" Yet done with striving, and foreclosed of care, 

in the sonnet entitled *At Rest' is as good as 
anything of Drayton's. You know his sonnet, 

" Since there 's no help, come, let us kiss and part ! 
" Mocked by a day that shines no more on thee, 

in the sonnet called 'The New Year Dawns,' 
is the very truth in the strong simplicity of the 
Elizabethan age. 

"WTiat a wonderful line is the last one of 
the sonnet, 'The Song of the Stars': 

" The waking rapture, and the fair, far place." 

The serenity and sweetness of Longfellow's 
verse are the natural expression of a life sweet 
and serene ; and in the work of Mrs. Moulton 
the beauty of her w^ork was in no less a meas- 
ure the inevitable outcome of her character. 
She wrote so spontaneously that her poems 
seemed, as she used to say, "to come to her," 
and although she never spared the most care- 

16 



242 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

ful polishing, yet her song seemed to spring 
without effort and almost without conscious 
prevision. 

The literary life was to her in its outward 
aspect chiefly a matter of fit and harmonious 
companionship. She declared that she thought 
"the great charm of a literary life was that it 
made one acquainted with so many delight- 
ful people." Her warm sense of the per- 
sonality and characteristics of the writers 
whom she met in London has been alluded 
to already, and some of her words about them 
have been quoted in a former chapter. Those 
who enjoyed the privilege of chatting with her 
in her morning-room were never tired of 
hearing her give her impressions of distin- 
guished authors. 

"George Meredith's talk," she said on one 
occasion, "is like his books, it is so scintillat- 
ing, so epigrammatic. In talking with him 
you have to be swiftly attentive or you will 
miss some allusion or witticism, and seem 
disreputably inattentive." 

"Thomas Hardy," she said again, "has 
the face, I think, which one would expect from 
his books. His forehead is so large and so 
fine that it seems to be half his face. His 
blue eyes are kindly, but they are extremely 
shrewd. You feel that he sees everything. 



POET AND FRIEND 243 

and that because he would always understand 
he would always forgive. I have heard him 
called the shyest man in London, but he 
never impressed me so." 

"I did not find George Eliot so plain a 
person as she is ordinarily represented," she 
replied to a question about that author. "To 
me she seemed to have a singularly interesting 
face and a lovely smile; and one distinctive 
trait, one peculiarly her own, was a very 
gentle and sweet deference of manner. In 
any difference of opinion, she always began by 
agreeing with the person with whom she was 
conversing, as 'I quite see that, but don't 
you think — ' and then there would follow a 
statement so supremely convincing, so com- 
prehensive, so true, so sweetly suggestive, 
that one could not help being convinced. It 
was like a fair mist over a background of the 
greatest strength." 

Christmas was always a season of much 
activity at No. 28 Rutland Square. The 
tokens which Mrs. Moulton sent to friends 
kept her and Katy busy long in arranging and 
sending; and in turn came gifts from far and 
near. With her generous and friendly spirit 
she was fully in sympathy with the spirit of 
the time. Among her Christmas gifts on this 



244 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

year, was one from Louise Imogen Guiney, 
with these charming and delicately humorous 
verses : 

TO LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

With a Thermometer at Christmas. 

Behold, good Hermes ! (once a god 
With errand- winglets crowned and shod). 
Your silvern, sensitive, slim rod. 

Still potent, still surviving; 
Chill mimic of the chilly sky. 
Crouched, chin on knee, morose and sly. 
Where, in my luthern window's eye. 

The Christmas snows are driving. 
But if beside her heart you were. 
And over you the smile of her. 
Oh, never might the north-wind stir, 

Or gleaming frost benumb her ! 
For you, of old, love warmth and light, 
And in the calendar's despite. 
This moment leaping to your height, 

I know you 'd swear 't is summer ! 

On January 1, 1901, Mrs. Moulton records 
in her diary: 

"Wrote a sonnet, the first in nearly or 
quite two years, beginning, 'Once more the 
New Year mocks me with its scorn.'" 

When the poem was published, "New Year" 
had been changed to "morning." 

The summer of this year found her again 
in London. Her health was seriously affected. 



POET AND FRIEND U5 

and at times she was a great sufferer; but 
when she was able to go about among her 
friends she was as full of spirit as ever. In- 
deed, the diary gives a surprising list of 
festivities which she attended. 

"Went to Lady Wynford's charming lunch- 
eon. 

" Went to Edward Clifford's to see pictures, 
and had the loveliest evening.'* 

"Went to Archdeacon Wilberforce's, Mrs. 
Meynell's, and Mrs. Clifford's, and dined at 
Annie Lane's." 

"Lunch at Sir Richard Burton's at Hamp- 
stead Heath. Lady Burton, who can never sit 
up, because of spinal trouble, was charming." 

"Some one — a lady who left no name — 
brought me charming roses. A good many 
guests — Lady Wynford, Mrs. Sutherland Orr, 
Canon Bell, and George Moore among them." 

"Went to Lord Iddesleigh's. He gave me 
his first book, 'Belinda Fi tz warren. ' " 

To this summer belongs the following 
letter, which is interesting not only in itself, 
but also as illustrating how the old questions 
of religion followed Mrs. Moulton through 
life: 



246 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Dr. E. TVinchester Donald to Mrs. Moulton 

"July 9, 1901. 

"... This place is a paradise. The 
Thames, from Windsor to Henley, is a beau- 
tiful dream, sailing up and down — no 
churches, no responsibilities. Consequently 
we New Englanders need not urge that it is 
dangerous to linger long upon its bosom. 
If there be no physical miasma rising from 
these waters, I fear there is an ethical one. 
. . . You are very kind and very generous. 
Your gift is very acceptable to us, and in my 
own name and that of those whom the Church 
is tr}ang to help, I thank you with all my 
heart. What you have told me of the per- 
plexities that beset you is more than simply 
interesting, — it is also revelatory of what, I 
fancy, is not uncommon among the thought- 
ful folk. But why not fall back deliberately 
on worship as distinguished from satisfactory 
precision of opinion or belief.^ I should not 
be surprised to learn that prayer has tided 
many people over the bar of intellectual per- 
plexity into the harbor of a reasonable faith. 
Indeed, I know it has. The instinct of 
humanity is to worship and fall down before 
the Lord, our Maker. Wliy should we insist 
on having a precisely formulated proposition 



POET AND FRIEND 247 

as respects the nature of that Lord before we 
worship ? Prayer and praise form the sole 
common meeting-ground of humanity. Why 
not come back to the Church, not as a thor- 
oughly satisfied holder of accurately stated 
formulas, but as a soul eager to gain whatever 
of help, hope, or comfort the Church has to 
give ? You would never repent this, I am 
confident. My strong wish, never stronger 
than to-day, is that all of us may be receiving 
from God what God is only ready to give. 
For our reasoned opinions we must be intel- 
lectually intrepid and industrious. For our 
possession of the peace that passeth under- 
standing we must be spiritually receptive and 
responsive. " 

After Mrs. Moulton's return to Boston in 
the autumn, the diary shows the old round of 
engagements, of visits from friends, of interest 
in the new books, and the writing and receiv- 
ing of innumerable letters. Mrs. Alice Mey- 
nell came to Boston in the winter as the guest 
of Mrs. James T. Fields, and to her Mrs. 
Moulton gave a luncheon. The Emerson- 
Browning club gave a pleasant reception in 
Mrs. Moulton's honor, at which by request 
she read "The Secret of Arcady"; at one of 
Mrs. Mosher's *' Travel-talks" she read by invi- 



^48 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

tation "The Roses of La Garraye" ; and \\dth 
occasions of this sort the winter was dotted. 

In a note written that spring to Mrs. John 
Lane is this pleasant passage : 

"Frances Willard's mother was in her 
eighties, — she was on her death-bed — it 
was, I think, the day before she died, and her 
daughter said to her, 'Well, mother, if you 
had your life to live over again, I don't think 
you would want to do anything differently 
from what you have done.' The dear old 
lady turned her gray head on the pillow, and 
smiled, and said, 'Oh, yes; if I had my life 
to live over again, I would praise a great deal 
more and blame a great deal less. ' I always 
thought it lovely to have felt and said." 

In London in this summer of 1902 she notes 
in her diary that she went to the dinner of 
the Women Writers. Later, she was given a 
luncheon by the Society of American Women 
in London. She sat, of course, on the right 
of the president, Mrs. Griffin, and next to 
her was placed Lady Annesley, "who seemed 
to me," she said afterward, "the most beauti- 
ful woman I had ever seen." She gave a 
little dinner to which she imdted AVhistler, 
who accepted in the following terms: 



POET AND FRIEND 249 

J. McNeill Whistler to Mrs. Moulton 

00 CiiEYNE Road. 
Dear Louisi:: I accept your invitation 
with f^rcat pleasure, and liow kind and con- 
siderate of you to make it ei^ht-thiriy. I 
really believe I shall reach you, not only in 
<ro()d time, hut in the unrufTled state oi' mind 
and body tliat is utterly done away with in 
the usual scramble across country, racing 
hopelessly for the "quarter to." . . . 
Yours sincerely, 

J. McN. W. 

Wlien in her Boston hojne Mrs. Moulton 
w\i,s seldom, in later years, allured far afield. 
She thought little of a journey to Europe, but 
avoided even an hour's journey "out of town." 
She had in London, however, come to be fond 
of the lady who became Mrs. Truman J. 
Martin, of Buffalo, N. Y., and to her had 
written the lyric, "A Sonfij for Rosalys"; 
and she made an exception to her usual cus- 
tom to visit her friend in her American home. 
A Buffalo journal remarks on the occurrence 
with the true floridn(\ss of society journalism: 

"The event of the week par excellence has 
been the arrival in Buffalo of that gifted writer 
and eminent woman — Mrs. Louise Chandler 



250 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Moulton of Boston. Mrs. Moulton arrived 
on Monday evening, and is the guest of her 
friend, Mrs. Truman J. Martin of North 
Street, where she is resting after a season 
of excessive Hterary work and many social 
obhgations. . . . Mrs. Moulton has a striking 
personality. The years have touched lightly 
her heart and features, her strongest char- 
acteristic being a heartiness and sincerity and 
warmth that come to a great soul who has 
enjoyed and suffered much and who has 
dipped into the deepest of life's grand experi- 
ences. She dresses handsomely and somewhat 
picturesquely, elegant laces and rich velvet 
and silks forming themselves into her expres- 
sive attire." 

The reporter goes on to describe a reception 
given to Mrs. Moulton by her hostess at 
which a local club known as the Scribblers 
was represented: 

"Flowers were everywhere in the house, 
bowls and vases of white carnations. 'The 
Scribblers" flowers, and roses and lilies for 
*Rosalys,' Mrs. Martin's middle name, and 
which she still retains — * Charlotte Rosalys 
Jones,' as her pen name. . . . Mrs. Moulton 
was dressed in black satin, with elegant rose- 
point lace and diamonds. . . . The real de- 



POET AND FRIEND 251 

light of the afternoon came when Mrs. Moiil- 
ton took up a little bundle of her poems, 
special selections of Mrs. Martin's, and read 
with great expression some of the sublime, 
pathetic, and passionate thoughts that have 
endeared this writer to the English reading 
world and placed her among the foremost of 
American writers. Mrs. Moulton's voice is 
of peculiar timbre, and reveals to the intelli- 
gent listener a character of the finest mould, 
sufl'ering intensely through the inevitable de- 
crees of a fate not too kind to the most favored, 
and a wealth of love and devotion that is 
immeasurable. " 

The hostess might be English, but the 
description of the entertainment could hardly 
be more American. 

Mrs. Moulton mentioned that during this 
visit she met Mrs. Charles Rohlfs (Anna 
Katherine Green), and had an opportunity 
of saying that she had enjoyed that writer's 
novels. Like Mrs. Browning, who declared 
that she "slept with her pillows stuffed with 
novels," Mrs. Moulton was a confirmed reader 
of fiction. She read them at seventy with the 
zest of seventeen, and took "cruel endings" 
quite to heart. 

Among the letters of the winter is an amus- 



252 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

ing note from Secretary John Hay, accom- 
panying a copy of the "Battle of the Books," 
and saying: "Don't ask how I obtained it! 
I am proud to say in a strictly dishonest 
manner!" An invitation from Miss Anne 
Whitney, too, asking her to dine, and assuring 
her that she "will meet some friends with- 
out strikingly bad traits " ; and many epistles 
from which pleasant bits might be taken. 
An interesting letter from Alice Brown refers 
to the subject of death, and in allusion to her 
friend, Louise Imogen Guiney, Miss Brown 
says: "So if you go before Louise and me, it 
will only be to begin another spring some- 
where else, — gay as the daffodils. I hope 
you '11 keep your habit of singing there, and 
we shall all love to love and love to serve." 
A letter of Bliss Carman's thus refers to Miss 
Guiney : 

Bliss Carman to Mrs. Moulton 

"... Have you seen that perfect thing of 
Louise Imogen Guiney's with the lines, — 

"And children without laughter lead 
The war-horse to the watering. 

"Is n't that the gold of poetry? She ought 
to have a triumph on the Common, and a win- 
dow in Memorial Hall. . . . Do you see that 
faun of Auburndale .? " 



POET AND FRIEND 253 

On New Year's Day, 1903, the diary re- 
cords : "First of all I wrote a sonnet — * Why 
Do I never See You in My Dreams ? ' " 

The summer was passed in London as usual, 
but with, if possible, more festivities than ever. 
The diary records : 

"Went to Lady Seton's luncheon party — 
of I think twenty — a very pleasant affair in 
honor of Mr. Howells and his daughter. I 
sat next to Mr. Howells and had a good talk 
with him." 

"Went to the luncheon at the Cecil, given 
by the Society of American Women in London 
in honor of Ambassador and Mrs. Reid and 
Mr. and Mrs. Longworth." 

"Went in the evening to the Women Writ- 
ers' dinner. I sat at Mrs. Craigie's table." 

"Went to the Lyceum Club Saturday din- 
ner. Lady Frances Balfour presided." 

"Went to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts' 
garden-party. Oh, Holly Lodge is such a 
beautiful place !" 

"Went to Irving's dinner at the New Gal- 
lery. Sir Edward Russell, editor of the Daily 
Post, Liverpool, took me out; and a delight- 
ful companion he was." 



254 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

"Many guests: Mrs. Wilberforce, Lady 
Henry Somerset, Mrs. Henniker, the Pearsall 
Smiths, Wilham Watson, Oswald Crawfurd, 
* Michael Field' (that is to say Miss Bradley 
and Miss Cooper), Violet Hunt, Mr. and Mrs. 
Clement Shorter, Archdeacon and Mrs. Wil- 
berforce, and many more." 

As the years went on, bringing her to 
the verge of seventy, Mrs. Moul ton's literary 
activity naturally grew greatly less. The 
record of her life for the following years was 
largely a record of friendships, with the en- 
joyments and honors which belonged to her 
place among American writers. She was 
asked often to write her reminiscences of the 
many distinguished people she had known, 
but always decHned. "I have, alas! kept no 
records," she wrote to one editor. She was 
naturally asked to be present at any literary 
function of importance. She was a guest at 
the dinner given by the New England Women's 
Club in 1905, in honor of Mrs. Howe's eighty- 
fifth birthday, and notes that it was "a bril- 
liant meeting," and adding: "Mrs. Howe 
had \NTitten a gay little poem in response, won- 
derful woman that she is." The dinner given 
in honor of Mark Twain's seventieth birthday 
was the last great occasion of the kind which 



POET AND FRIEND 255 

she attended. In the following year she re- 
turned from Europe just too late to join in 
the dinner given by the Harj)ers on the seven- 
tieth birthday of Dr. Alden. Not only for her 
literary standing and as an old friend of Dr. 
Alden would it have been appropriate for her 
to be present on this occasion ; but she might 
also have appeared as his first contributor, as 
some thirty years earlier, Dr. Alden's first 
official act upon assuming the chair as editor 
of Harper^ s Magazine had been to accept a 
contribution from Mrs. Moulton. 

In the letters of this {)eriod are to be found 
the truest records of what most interested Mrs. 
Moulton and best expressed her personality. 
Unfortunately she often asked that her letters 
should be destroyed, so that no selection which 
may now be brought together does her com- 
plete justice. The letters she received, how- 
ever, reflect in many ways those to whicli they 
replied ; and extracts from them may be left 
to speak for themselves. 

Louise Imogen Guiney to Mrs. Moulton 

"... On an awfully wild and windy day 
of last week I struck off for Ilighgate over 
Ilampstead Heath, and got so drenched addi- 
tionally in the memories of the men who reign 
over me, Lamb, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, 



^56 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

and Hunt, that I declare now I must live there 
a while. Coleridge's tomb I knew to be under 
the crypt of the Grammar Schaol, and I found 
the Gilmans' house where he died, thanks to 
the only knowledge that I seem to have had 
from everlasting. The tomb is a queer piece 
of masonry, so placed that you may put your 
hand within an inch of his coffin. After some 
exploring and inquiring, George Eliot's grave 
turned up in the new grounds of Highgate 
Cemetery, where I suppose poor Philip Mars- 
ton's must be. Her grave is an entirely un- 
conventional affair, to the memory of Mary 
Ann Cross. I caught myself wondering 
whether there were any special reason for 
laying that great soul (here is some theologi- 
cal inaccuracy !) in so narrow and crowded a 
space, when suddenly I shifted my position, 
and saw that she was lying directly at the feet 
of George Henry Lewes, born August 4, 1817, 
died December 30, 1878. It gave me a queer 
sensation, I tell you, for Lewes' marble is half 
hidden and not visible from the path. If it 
were George Eliot's wish, honor to Mr. Cross 
for carrying it out ! " 

"Some agreeable witchery, sure to be tran- 
sient, is about me to-day, for I 've made a 
'pome,' the first since winter, and patched 



POET AND FRIEND 257 

up a trivial old one, — both of which I send 
you as a slight token that I may get out of 
Bedlam yet. The sonnet I want you to cherish, 
it is so abominably pessimistic. ..." 

"I have been luxuriating in 'Atalanta.' . . . 
That is my springtime. There is no such music 
and motion and solemn gladness anywhere in 
modern verse. In a year or two more I shall 
know it by heart from cover to cover. . . . And 
here is England knee-deep in green and dai- 
sies ; England piled with ruined Abbey walls." 

"I have two refreshments to chronicle, — 
one is Irving's 'Becket,' and not the stock- 
still, curiously inefficient play, but just 
Irving's 'Becket,' otherwise *St. Thomas of 
Canterbury,' a flash and a breath from Heaven. 
Where does that actor get his gift of everything 
spiritual and supernatural ? His charm to me 
is that he has great moral power, — either in- 
herent from the noble mind ... or else ac- 
quired by art so subtle that I never got hold 
of the like. . . . Surely, not everybody can 
see so into a character . . . and measure its 
astonishing depth in humanity and divinity." 

Archdeacon Wilherjorce to Mrs. Moulton 

"Dear Mrs. Chandler-Moulton : Thank 
you for your letter. On page 237, of the book 

17 



258 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

I send you, I have answered your question 
'Why cannot God make people good in the 
first instance.' Because even God can only 
make things by means of the process by which 
they become what they are. God could not 
make a hundred-year-old tree in your garden 
in one minute. He cannot make a moral being 
except through the processes by means of 
which a moral being becomes what he is. 
What does Walt Whitman say.? 

" Our life is closed, our life begins. 
And again: 

" In the divine ship, the World hasting Time and Space, 

All People of the globe together sail, sail the same voyage, 
are bound for the same destination. ..." 

Miss Rohhins to Mrs. Moulton 

96 Mt. Vernon St., 
January 23, 1906. 

My dear Mrs. Moulton : This little note 
from Dean Hodges belongs to you rather than 
to me. If you had never written anything else 
all your life but this beautiful "Help Thou 
Mine Unbelief," you have done something 
worth living for, something truly great. 

And now to explain a little. I was glad to 
meet Dean Hodges at your house, and I asked 
him if among your poems he knew this one 
that I so prized. I told him that I had shown 
it to Dr. Momerie, who murmured, after read- 



POET AND FRIEND 259 

ing it: "It is finer, it is, than *Lea(I, Kindly 
Light.'" Dr. Momerie then went on to say 
there were only half a dozen good hymns, and 
that this was one of them. As Dean Ilodges 
did not know the poem, I offered to copy it for 
him, as I have done for several [)cople l)efore, 
and now this is his reply. Such praise from 
such a man is praise indeed ! 

I had such an interesting time at your house, 
meeting such interesting people, but what I 
wanted most was a tete-a-tete with my inter- 
esting hostess. I always want to know you 
better. 

Believe me, dear Mrs. Moulton, 
Always yours, 

Julia Robbins. 

Dean Hodges to Miss Robbins 

[Enclosed] 

The Dioankuy, Camuhidoe, 
January 22, 1906. 

Dear Miss Robbins: I cannot thank you 
enough for tliesc devout and helpful verses of 
Mrs. Moulton's. I have read and re-read 
them, — every time with new appreciation. 
They belong to the great hymns. 

It was a pleasure to meet you, and one I 
hope to have again. 

Faithfully yours, 

George Hodges. 



260 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Dr. Hale to Mrs. Moulton 

April 5, 1906. 

Dear Mrs. Moulton : I thank you indeed 
for the kind expression of memories and hopes 
which calls up so much from the past and looks 
forward so cheerfully into the future. . . . No, 
as life goes on with us, we do no't rest as often 
as I should like. But that is the special good 
of a milestone like this, — it gives us a chance 
to look backward and forward. 

This note has carried me back to an old 
friend, Phillips, the publisher, who died too 
early for the rest of us. You wall not remem- 
ber it, but he introduced me to you. I wonder 
if you can know how highly he prized your 
literary work ? 

With thanks for your kind note, dear Mrs. 
Moulton, 

I am always yours, 

Edward Everett Hale. 

Mrs. Moulton's visit to London in the sum- 
mer of 1906 was her last. While her health 
forced her to decline most invitations, she still 
saw her numerous friends in quiet, inti- 
mate ways, and was made to feel their abiding 
affection. 



POET AND FRIEND 2C1 

On her birthday of this year she received, 
with a single red rose, this poem from the late 
Arthur Upson : 

Does a rose at the bud-time falter 
To think of the Junes gone by ? 

Shall our love of the red rose alter 
IJecause it so soon mast die? 

Nay, for the beauty lingers 

Though the symbols pass away — 

The rose that fades in my fingers, 
The June that will not stay. 

I used to mourn their fleetness, 
But years have taught me this: 

A memory wakes their sweetness, 
The hope of them, their bliss. 

They arc not themselves the treasure. 
But they signal and they suggest 

Imperishable pleasure, 
Inviolable rest ! 

Among the Christmas gifts which she made 
this year was a copy of "At the Wind's Will," 
which she sent to Miss Sarah Holland Adams, 
the accomplished essayist and translator from 
the German. It was thus acknowledged : 

Miss Adams to Mrs. Moulton 

"Dear Mrs. Moulton: Your beautiful 
little book is a dear thing. I thank you for 
sympathy in the loss of my only brother. I 



262 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

am writing to the publisher for your 'Garden 
of Dreams.' I 've never read it and now I 
need to live in dreams. Do you know Swin- 
burne's lines on the death of Barry Cornwall ? 
No poem ever haunted me like this. The 
tone of it, even in my brightest moods, seemed 
to color my words. Of course this must be 
imagination, but the last lines are so dear, — 

"For with us shall the music and perfume that die not dwell, 
Tho' the dead to our dead bid welcome — and we, farewell." 

*' Later. 

"How kind, how generous you are, to send 
me this precious volume ! I find many fine 
poems in it and only wish I could hear you 
read them." 

And so, as always before, on all the New 
Years of all her lovely life, the old year went 
out and the New Year came in to the music of 
gracious words. Her life, marking the calen- 
dar with kindly deeds and beautiful thought, 
leaves as its legacy 

. . . the assurance strong 
That love, which fails of perfect utterance here, 
Lives on to fill the heavenly atmosphere 
With its immortal song. 



CHAPTER IX 

1907-1908 

. . . May she meet 
With long-lost faces through the endless days; 

Find youth again, and life with love replete, 
In amethystine meadows where she strays; 

And hear celestial music, strangely sweet, 
By the still waters of the lilied ways. — Longfellow. 

... A Hand like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See Christ 
stand ! — Browning. 

Break, ties that bind me to this world of sense. 
Break, now, and loose me on the upper air; 
Those skies are blue; and that far dome more fair 

With prophecy of some divine, intense. 

Undreamed-of rapture. Ah, from thence 
I catch a music that my soul would snare 
With its strange sweetness; and I seem aware 

Of Life that waits to crown this life's suspense. — L. C. M. 

IN any thought of Mrs. Moulton's life, 
through which gleamed always the double 
thread of friendship and song, certain 
words of the Rev. Dr. Ames associate them- 
selves, — that all our time here is God's time, 
"which we measure off by days and years. 



264 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

that we are, even now, continually with Him 
in the great Forever, embosomed in the 
infinite power and purity." In Mrs. Moul- 
ton's own words, it is only 

From life to Life 

that w^e pass. 

In retrospective glance, how beautiful are 
these closing months of her sojourn on earth ! 
They were filled to the last with love and 
friendship, and sweet thought. Mrs. Moul- 
ton's health was constantly failing from this 
winter of 1907 until she passed through 
the "Gleaming Gates" in August of 1908, 
but so gently imperceptible w^as the decline 
that even through this winter she half planned 
to go to London again in the spring. In a 
little meditation on the nature of life which 
T. P. O'Connor induced her to write for his 
journal about this time, under the caption of 
"My Faith and My Works," she said: 

"There must be always 'the still, sad music 
of humanity' — the expression of the mind 
that foresees, of the heart that aches with 
foreknowledge. One would not ignore the 
gladness of the dawn, the strong splendor of 
the mid-day sun; but, all the same, the 
shadows lengthen, and the day wears late. 

"And yet the dawn comes again after the 



POET AND FRIEND 265 

night ; and one has faith — or is it hope 
rather than faith ? — that the new world 
which swims into the ken of the spirit to whom 
Death gives wings, may be fairer even than 
the dear famihar earth — that, somewhere, 
somehow, we may find again the long-lost; 
or meet the long-desired, the un-found, who 
forever evaded our reach in this mocking 
sphere, where we have never been quite at 
home, because, after all, we are but travel- 
lers, and this is but our hostelry, and not our 
permanent abode." 

"My best reward has been the friendships 
that my slight work has won for me," she had 
said; and the assurance of these did not 
fail her to the end. 

In the article just quoted she said of her 
work: 

"I have written many times more prose 
than verse, but it is my verse which is most 
absolutely me, and for which I would rather 
that you should care. Some critics assert that 
the sonnet is an artificial form of expression. 
Is it ? I only know that no other seems to 
me so intimate — in no other can I so sincerely 
utter the heart's cry of despair or of longing 
— the soul's aspiration toward that which 
is eternal. 



266 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

"AjQi I a realist? I think I am; but who 
was it who said that the sky is not less real 
than the mud?" 

The death of her old friend, Mr. Aldrich, 
greatly moved her, and in her diary for 
March !20. 1907, she records: 

"Lidoors all day; an awful windstorm, 
and the day was made sad by the news in the 
morning's paper of T. B. Aldrich's death 
yesterday, in the late afternoon. Oh, how 
sad death seems. Aldrich was seventy last 
November. How soon we, his contempo- 
raries, shall all be gone. His death seems to 
da rken every thi ng . " 

Two days later she writes: 

"Went to the funeral ser\4ces of T. B. 
Aldrich, at Arlington Street Church. The 
services, the music, and Mr. Frothingham's 
reading, were most impressive and beautiful. 
... In the evening came Mr. Stedman to 
see me. His visit was a real pleasure, I had 
not seen him for so long." 

This must have been the last meeting be- 
tween Mrs. Moulton and Mr. Stedman after 
their almost life-long friendship. 

To Mrs. Aldrich she wrote: 



VOV/V AND FIMKNI) ^207 

t 

Mrs. Moulton to Mrs. Aldrich 

ii8 UiJ'i'i.ANi) Squaftk, 

Manli :5(), I!)07. 

Dear Mus. Ai.niiicii : I (•.•iimol. Idl you 
how my talk willi you ji lew days .in-o hrou^lil. 
the \i)n^ past hack to luc. How I wish I 
couhl j>ut into words a picture of your j)oct 
as I saw him first. I was in New York for ;i 
visit, and was Invited for ;in afternoon to ;ui 
out-of-town j)hic;e, when^ .'i, j)oet-fii<'nd .'iiid 
lu's wife were stayin<»;. Other interestin<r jx-o- 
ple were there, l)ut iJic one I rcMnemhcr was 
'V. IJ. A. His poems liad cliarmed me, Jind 
to me he was not only their author, hut their 
embodiment. Had it been otherwise^ I siiould 
have felt bereft of an ideal ; but he was all 
I had ima^^ined and more. I saw him alive 
with tlie s[)lendor of youth, ricli, even then, in 
achievement, and richer still in hofx* and 
dr(^ams, — a combination of knight and jxxit. 
He escorted m(^ ba(*k to N(;w York, I remen)- 
ber, and tlie charm of lu's pn^sc^nce and his 
conversation still lingers in my memory. 
Ever since then \ have; kef)t in touch with 
his work and loved it. TTis [x^rsonality at- 
tracted every one who met him, and his ^^tiw.r- 
ous kindness and appreciation were a joy to 
those who sought his sym[)athy. 



268 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

I remember the pleasure T\ith which my 
poet-friend, Frederic Lawrence Knowles, told 
me of a kind invitation to call on Mr. Aldrich, 
and the yet more enthusiastic delight with 
which he afterward described the interview. 
He found his gracious and graceful host to 
be so wise, sympathetic, hopeful, and sugges- 
tive, all that he had hoped for and more. I 
think every young poet who had the happiness 
of meeting him could bear similar testimony. 

I saw him last on the twelfth of January, 
1907, so short a time before his death, and 
yet he seemed so alert and alive, so interesting, 
so entirely what he was when I knew him 
first that one could not have dreamed that the 
end was near. The only consolation for a 
loss that will be so widely felt is in the legacy 
he has left to the world of immortal charm 
and beauty, — the work that will not die. 
Yours most sincerely, 
Louise Chandler Moulton. 

The last sonnet which Mrs. Moulton wrote 
was for the birthday of Mrs. Howe. 

TO JULIA WARD HOWE 

On her Eighty-seventh Birthday, Mat 27, 1907 

Youth is thy gift — the youth that baffles Time, 
And smiles derisively at vanished years. 
Since the long past the present more endears. 



POET AND FRIEND 269 

And life but ripens in its golden prime, 

Who knows to what proud heiglits thou still may'st climb — 
What summoning call thy listening spirit hears — 
What triumphs wait, ere conquering death appears — 

What magic beauty thou may'st lend to rhyme ? 

Sovereign of Love and May, we kiss the hand 
Such noble work has wrought, and add our bays 

To those with which the world has crowned thy brow: 

Thy subjects we, in this the happy land. 

Thy presence gladdens, and thy gracious ways 

Enchant — Queen of the Long- Ago and Now. 

During the summer Mrs. Moulton was for 
the most part in her morning-room, sur- 
rounded by her favorite books, her papers, 
her letters, attended by the faithful Katy, and 
remembered constantly with flowers and tokens 
from friends. She cherished until quite mid- 
summer the hope of joining the Schaefers, 
who were in Europe; but in reply to their 
urgent wish to return and be with her, she 
begged that they would not cut short their 
trip, as it would distress her to feel that they 
were in Boston during the hot weather. To 
a friend who remained in town and who saw 
her every day, she said: "It would make me 
really ill to have Florence and Will come into 
this hot town, I should only feel how un- 
comfortable they must be, dear as they are 
to wish to come for my sake. With letters 
and the cable, we are in touch all the time." 



270 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

It was, on the whole, a pleasant season, 
although she was often uncomfortable if 
not actually in pain. Friends urged her to 
come into the country, but to this she did not 
feel equal. Mrs. Spofford had met with an ac- 
cident, but before the summer was over was able 
to resume her visits ; and more than anything 
else her companionship brightened the days. 

The autumn brought back the accustomed 
circle, and in October came the following 
letter from Dr. Ames: 

Dr. Ames to Mrs. Moulton 

12 Chestnut St., Boston, 
October 24, 1907. 

My Dear Friend: I am somewhat foot- 
fast; but very far from indifferent, and you 
will never know how often your name is called 
as I tell my rosary beads. 

I wonder if you find comfort, as I often do, 
in the thought that all true and honorable 
human friendship is representative of its 
inspiring source, and that we should not thus 
care for each other, and wish each other's 
highest welfare, if our hearts were not in 
receptive touch VAth a Heart still greater, 
purer, and more loving .^ Can you rest in 
the imperfect good will of your friends and 
yet distrust its Origin and Fountain? 



POET AND FRIEND 271 

I appreciate and share your perplexity 
over the world's "Vast glooms of woe and 
sin." But, when most weary and heavy- 
laden with all our common burden of sorrow 
and shame, I find some measure of strength 
and peace in the example and spirit of One 
who knew and felt it all, One who could gather 
into a heart of boundless compassion all the 
blind and struggling multitudes, and could 
yet trust all the more fully to the Father's love 
for all, because He felt that love in His own. 

The problem of evil — my evil, yours, 
everybody's — was not solved by Him with 
any reasoning; it was simply met and over- 
matched by faith which saw all finite things 
held in the Infinite, as all the stars are held 
in space. 

Did sin abound.^ Grace did much more 
abound. To that superabounding grace I 
commit all our needy souls. I know no 
other resource. I need no other. 

Not all the sins that we have wrought 
So much His tender mercies grieve 

As that unkind, injurious thought 
That He 's not willing to forgive. 

As for unanswered questions, — let them 
rest. They rest while you sleep; let them 
rest while you wake. In opening a window 
to look out, we shall let in the blessed light of 



272 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

heaven. How many hearts have found this 
true ! Did any ever find it untrue ? To escape 
from self-attention is the sure cure of morbid, 
self-consuming thoughts and moods. . . . 

While you and I are waiting for the sunset 
gun, what use can we make of our afternoon 
except to welcome the sacred horizontal light, 
which shows us how our resources and ener- 
gies can best be applied to the welfare of 
others } If in considering our remaining oppor- 
tunities and duties, we may partly forget our 
own private troubles, that will be salvation, 
will it not.^ We may be sure that all the 
happiness we try to secure for others will 
return to ourselves redoubled. You would 
say this to another, why not say it insistently 
to yourself. 

Faithfully yours, 

Charles Gordon Ames. 

In November her daughter and son-in-law 
arrived, and from that time did not leave her. 
There were happy days in which Mrs. Moul- 
ton was able to drive, although these were 
rare, and as the winter wore on she was less 
and less able to see friends. The last letter 
she ever wrote, save for some brief words to 
Mrs. Spofford, written when she could with 
difficulty hold a pen, was one to Archdeacon 



POET AND FRIEND 273 

Wilberforce, and even this was left unfinislicd. 
It was entirely concerned with religious ques- 
tionings. 

The entries in her diary became few and 
irregular. There is a pathetic beauty in the 
fact that the latest complete record, in the- 
early summer of 1908, is a mention of a visit 
from "dear Hal," Mrs. SpolFord. The very 
last was simply the words "Florence and 
Will," which fitly closed the record which 
had extended over more than a quarter of a 
century. 

Hardly a month before her death Colonel 
Higginson wrote to her that he felt that in 
her execution she excelled all other Ameri- 
can women-poets. She had questioned him 
of death, and he replied: "Your question 
touches depths. I never in my life felt any 
fear of death, as such. I never think of my 
friends as buried." 

The transition came on Monday, August 10, 
1908. On the Friday l^efore she had seemed 
better, and Mrs. S[)ofFord, who was with her 
on that day, remarked afterward that "It was 
delightful to hear her repeat her lyric, 'Roses.'" 

Roses that briefly live, 

Joy is your dower; 
Blest be the fates that give 

One perfect hour; 
18 



274 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

For, though too soon you die. 

In your dust glows 
Something the passer-by 

Knows was a rose. 

"Velvet-soft in this," Mrs. Spofford con- 
tinued, "her voice had a ringing gayety whose 
strange undertone was sorrow when reciting, 
*Bend Low, O Dusky Night.'" 

On Saturday she seemed still her old self, 
but on Sunday afternoon she became uncon- 
scious, and on the morning following came 
release. So peaceful was the transition that 
to the watchers it was as if she only passed 
from sleep into a deeper peace. The lines of 
the late Father Tabb might almost seem to 
have been written to describe that fitting end : 

Death seemed afraid to wake her, 

For traversing the deep 
When hence he came to take her, 

He kept her fast asleep. 
And happy in her dreaming 

Of many a risk to run. 
She woke with raptm-e beaming, 

To find the voyage done. 

The funeral service was held three days 
later. Friends had sent masses of flowers, 
and among them she rested, never more beau- 
tiful, with only peace on the still face. An 
incident slight, but at such a moment touch- 
ing, marked the removal of the casket from 




o 



o 



POET AND FRIEND 275 

the house. As it was borne down the steps a 
superb golden butterfly flew on just before it, 
as if it were a visible symbol of the rich spirit 
now "loosed upon the air." The committal 
was at Mount Auburn, where her grave is 
beside that of Mr. Moulton. A beautiful 
Celtic cross marks the spot where rests all 
that was mortal of one of the sweetest and 
most genuine singers of all her century. 

The letters of sympathy sent to Mrs. Schae- 
fer were many and spontaneous, full of indi- 
vidual feeling and of a sense of personal loss 
on the part of the writers. "I shall always 
feel grateful for the privilege of Mrs. Moulton's 
friendship," wrote the Rev. Albert B. Shields, 
then rector of the Church of the Redeemer. 
"One of the kindest friends I ever had," 
wrote Professor Evans, of Tufts College; 
"no one that I have known had a greater 
capacity than she for making close friends." 
"No one loved your mother as I did," was the 
word from Coulson Kernahan, "and her pass- 
ing leaves me lonelier and sadder than I can 
say." Mrs. Margaret Deland spoke of her 
"nature so generous, so full of the apprecia- 
tion of beauty, and of such unfailing human 
kindness." Mrs. Spofford, so long and so 
closely her friend, said simply: "I miss her 
more and more as the days go by. I miss 



276 LOUISE CPIANDLER MOULTON 

her sympathy, her comradeship. . . . She was 
inspiringly good and dear to me; and her 
love will go mtli me to the last." 

Such extracts might be multiplied, but 
they are not needed. The affection she felt 
and inspired must live in the hearts of her 
friends, and such letters are almost too tender 
and intimate to be put into cold print. 

Mrs. John Lane, now of London, but in 
former years known in Boston as Miss Eich- 
berg, one of the intimates of 28 Rutland 
Square, has Avritten the following reminis- 
cences of Mrs. Moulton, between whom and 
herself long existed a warm friendship: 

*'An anecdote told by Mrs. Moulton about 
Thomas Carlyle and his wife has been going 
the rounds of the press since her death, com- 
ing thus to my notice. I only partially recog- 
nize it as one she had often told me. The 
true version of it is as follows : Mrs. Moulton 
had it from her friend, Lady Ashburton, who 
was also a friend of Carlyle and his wife. 
It seems that Lady Ashburton had invited 
the Carlyles to visit her. There was a large 
house-party of people congenial to the great 
man, and one day after dinner Lady Ash- 
burton prevailed on Carlyle to read aloud 
some passages from the 'French Revolution.' 



POET AND FRIEND m 

From reading, Carlylc, carried away by liis 
subject, continued a discourse independent 
of his own work, which was so brilliant and 
eloquent that his hearers were profoundly 
imj)ressed. After he had ceased and it was 
time for all to separate for the night, they 
went, in turn, to exj)ress to him their a|)preci- 
ation. The only {)erson who did not do this 
was his wife, and as Carlyle stood as if ex{)ec- 
tant. Lady Ashburton said rather impulsively 
to Mrs. Carlyle: 'Wliy don't you s|)eak to 
him ? Your praise means more to him than 
that of all the rest, and only see how he has 
moved them!' *Ah, yes,' replied Mrs, Car- 
lyle, *but they don't have to live with him.'" 

*'I first met Mrs. Moulton in London in 
the early eighties. I had a letter of intro- 
duction to her from a common Boston friend. 
She was then in the beginning of her London 
success, knowing everybody in the literary 
world worth knowing, and extending her 
simple and charming hospitality to very great 
people indeed. To go to her Fridays was 
always to meet men and women whose names 
are famous on two continents. To a young 
girl as I was, brought up vdth a deep venera- 
tion for all things literary in England, it was 
a wonderful opportunity to come face to face. 



278 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

through her kindness, with the curious phases 
of art and Hterature of that period. 

"These movements were the outcome of 
the pre-Raphaehte, the outward aspects of 
that erratic and distinguished society, and its 
artificial simpHcity. It was enough to impress 
any one coming from so conventional a city 
as Boston. Perhaps the deepest impression 
made on me was by Philip Bourke Marston, for 
I remember how Mrs. Moulton brought him 
to see us, and my father, Julius Eichberg, 
played for him on the violin. Never shall I 
forget the picture as he sat there listening, his 
head supported by his hand, and the various 
expressions evoked by the music passing over 
his face. 

*'It was undoubtedly through Mrs. Moul- 
ton that the younger English poets of those 
earlier days won American recognition. Many 
of these who have now an assured place in 
literature were first known in America through 
her introduction. As I remember now, it 
was she who first unfolded to me the splendid, 
stately perfection and the profound thought of 
William Watson, and I can still hear her 
lovely voice as she recited to me that wonder- 
ful poem of his, 'World-Strangeness.' It was 
she who first read to me *The Ballad of a 
Nun,' by John Davidson, and that moving 



POET AND FRIEND 279 

and tragic poem by Rosamond Marriott, 
^Le Mauvais Larron.'* 

'*I remember going with Mrs. Moulton to 
Miss Ingelow's. Once I remember, when 
James Russell Lowell was first accredited 
Minister to the Court of St. James, and had 
just arrived in London, we met him at Miss 
Ingelow's. He was evidently a stranger to 
the hostess and to all her guests, and I recall 
his talking to her, holding in his hand a cup 
of tea which he evidently did not want. Miss 
Ingelow, in a bonnet and shawl, with a lace 
veil over her face (it was a garden party), 
seemed to be strickentwith a kind of English 
shyness which made her rather unresponsive, 
so that he went away without having been 
introduced to any one, while every one looked 
on and wanted to know him. 

"I remember an enthusiastic American girl 
who was introduced to Thomas Hardy by 
Mrs. Moulton, at one of her Fridays, who 
exclaimed, 'O Mr. Hardy, to meet you makes 
this a red letter day for me'; whereupon the 
quiet, reserved, great man looked at her in 
speechless alarm and fled. It was at Mrs. 
Moulton's that I first became acquainted 
with the editor of the famous 'Yellow Book.* 
He was Henry Harland, and its publisher was 
John Lane. I recall Mrs. Moulton saying 



S80 LOmSE CHANDLER MOULTON 

'Now that I have introduced the editor to 
you I must also introduce the pubhsher.' 

"It was in the 'Yellow Book' that the 
most distinguished of the younger English 
writers first won their spurs, and that erratic 
genius, Aubrey Beardsley, made his undying 
mark on the black and white art, not only of 
England, but of the world. It was all these 
younger men whose talent Mrs. Moulton 
made known to the American public. 

"In the first years of my friendship with 
Mrs. Moulton, when she still wrote fiction, she 
once told me of the plot of a story which had 
been told to her by Philip Marston. It was 
a wonderful plot and Mr. Marston wished her 
to use it. As she told me the details in her 
vivid way, I was profoundly impressed as if 
it had been a story of De Maupassant. She 
seemed to have no great desire to use it, 
although she was, for the moment, fired by 
my young enthusiasm for it. If ever I envied, 
as only a young literary aspirant can, it was 
Mrs. Moulton then as the ownership of that 
plot, and I told her so. 'If I do not use it,' 
she said, ' I wdll give it to you. ' So years 
passed, and in my mind still lingered the 
remembrance of that wonderful plot which, 
so far, Mrs. Moulton had not used. One 
evening we were at the theatre together, and 



POET AND FRIEND 281 

as we sat talking, between the acts, she 
suddenly reverted to the plot. 'I have de- 
cided,' she said, 'that I shall never use it, and 
I will give it to you.' I do not think that 
any gift ever made me so happy; it was a 
happiness that only a writer of stories can 
appreciate. It seemed to me as if I could 
not find words to express my gratitude for 
her great generosity. I know my delight 
made her happy. It was so a part of her to 
be happy in another's happiness. For days 
and weeks afterward I only lived in that won- 
derful plot — but to this day the wonderful 
plot has not been used. " 

The numbers of autograph copies of books 
presented to Mrs. Moulton by their authors 
she left, by memorandum, to the Boston 
Public Library, with the request that Pro- 
fessor Arlo Bates make the selection. These 
now form a memorial collection, each volume 
marked by a book-plate bearing an engraved 
portrait of Mrs. Moulton. Professor Bates 
has written an account of this collection, 
which, as it has not before been published, 
may be included here as not only interesting 
from the inscriptions which it contains, but 
as indicating the range and variety of Mrs. 
Moulton's literary friendships. 



282 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 



THE MOULTON COLLECTION 

"From the library of Mrs. Louise Chandler 
Moulton it has been my task — sombre yet 
grateful — to select a collection of autographed 
books and first editions to be given to the 
Public Library of Boston as a Memorial. 
Between eight and nine hundred volumes were 
found worthy, and of these no small number 
are of rarity and much interest. Mrs. Moulton 
had not only the books presented to her per- 
sonally by the writers, but from the library of 
Philip Bourke Marston she inherited many 
others enriched by the autographs of famous 
men and women. The list is too long to be 
given in anything like entirety, but it included 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Mathilde BHnd, Fred- 
erick von Bodenstedt, Charles Bradlaugh, 
Alice Brown, Madison Cawein, F. B. Money- 
Coutts, John Davidson, Austin Dobson, 
W. H. Drummond, Eugene Field, Richard 
Garnett, Richard Watson Gilder, Robert 
Grant, Edmund Gosse, Louise Imogen Guiney, 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, H. Rider Hag- 
gard, John Hay, William Ernest Henley, 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lord Houghton, 
Henry James, Amy Levy, Lady Lindsay, 
Frederick Locker, James Russell Lowell, 




""S^^ 



Facsimile of Book Plate from the Memorial Collection of 

THE Books of Louise Chandler Moulton 

Boston Public Library 

Paye 282 



POET AND FRIEND 283 

Stepliane Mallarme, Joaquin Miller, George 
Moore, Felix Moscheles, the Hon. Roden 
Noel, Thomas Nelson Page, John Payne, 
Nora Perry, Mr. and Mrs. James B. Piatt, 
James Whitcomb Riley, Amelie Rives, C. 
G. D. Roberts, Christina Rossetti, William 
Sharp, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Edmund 
Clarence Stedman, Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne, Bayard Taylor, John T. Trowbridge, 
Mrs. Humphry Ward, William Watson, Theo- 
dore Watts-Dunton, John Greenleaf Wliittier, 
and Mary Wilkins. 

"The exact number of authors represented 
has not been counted, but probably the auto- 
graphed volumes, of which there are about 
six hundred, do not contain more than a 
fifth of that number of well-known names. 
Some signatures are by unknown authors 
who sent their books to Mrs. Moulton because 
of her prominence; and in a limited number 
of cases such have been thrown out as obvi- 
ously not worthy of a place in the collection. 
The variety of the personal acquaintances 
among distinguished writers, however, illus- 
trates very strikingly the breadth of Mrs. 
Moulton's sympathies and the remarkable 
extent to which she kept in touch with cur- 
rent literature. In not a few cases, more- 
over, the inscriptions show how often her 



284 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

encouragement or wise counsel had been 
helpful to the writer. In 'The White Sail,' 
Miss Guiney writes: 'To Louise Chandler 
Moulton from her lover and debtor ' ; Charles 
Bradlaugh, in 'The Impeachment of the 
House of Brunswick': 'From the author to 
his critic'; F. B. Money-Coutts, in 'King 
Arthur' : 'A poor return for her kind interest' ; 
John Davidson, in 'New Ballads' : 'From her 
obliged friend.' Others of this sort might be 
quoted, and while dedicatory inscriptions are 
not always to be taken too seriously, no one 
could know Mrs. Moulton and her helpful 
kindliness without realizing to how many 
writers her sympathetic criticism and judicious 
advice had been of marked value. C. W. 
Dalmon, in a copy of the limited edition of 
'Song-Favors' writes: 'To Mrs. Louise 
Chandler Moulton for her loudness ' sake, and 
for the sake of "Phihp, our King" ; and the re- 
membrance of that kindness in so many hearts 
is to Mrs. Moulton a lasting monument.' 

"From the many and varied inscriptions 
in these books I have selected a handful which 
seem to me interesting, and which Mrs. 
Moulton's friends will, I hope, find so. In 
going over the library I was struck with the 
range in time which these autographs cover. 
It gave a feeling of being in touch with a past 



rOET AND FlUENI) 2S5 

almost tliJit of our ^randmotliers' to conic 
upon Le Tellicr's ' Ullistoirc Anciennc' witli 
the inscri])tion : 'Louise Cliandlcr Moulton 
from Mcidiimc Emma Willard, Troy Female 
Seminary, May 'JOili, 1850'; or upon 'T^-ucy 
Howard's Journal,' bearing upon the fly-leaf: 
'Mrs. Ellen Louise Moulton, with the love of 
her friend, L. TL Sigourney, Hartford, Conu't. 
Christmas, 1857.' The latter volume is dated 
by the publishers 1858, so that tlu^ trick of 
making the title-page state its age witli f(Mni- 
ninc inexactness is less recent than is generally 
supposed. Who to-day knows anything about 
Madame Willard, or has other remembrance 
of Mrs. Sigourney than that of seeing her 
name attached to moralizing selections in 
the reading-books of our remote youth? 

"Older still than these, although the fact 
that Mr. Trowbridge has happily been with 
us to the present time makes him seem less 
a figure of the past, are the inscriptions in 
the first and second series of Emerson's 
'Essays': 'Ella Louise from Paul Creyton, 
April 10th, 1854'; 'To Ellen Louise from 
J. T. T., April 10th, 1854.' To the same 
year belongs a copy of 'Mrs. Partington,* 
in which is written: 'To my granddaughter, 
Ellen Louise, Ruth Partington by B. P. 
Shillaber. ' I confess to something of a wist- 



286 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

ful feeling at these reminders of a time in 
the midyears of a century already dead, 
when I was in the nursery and 'Ellen Louise,' 
'Paul Creyton,' and 'Mrs. Partington' were 
the literary stars glimmering out with yet 
ungauged power in the sky where Emerson 
and Whittier and Longfellow were the fixed 
and shining lights. 

" The autographed books, for the most part, 
however, belong to the years since Mrs. 
Moulton had won her place as the leading 
woman-poet of America. Her intimate con- 
nection with the literary world in England 
has brought it about that almost as many 
English as American names are found writ- 
ten on the fly-leaves of presentation copies. 
Largely, of course, the sentiments are simple 
expressions of regard or admiration, and it 
has not seemed worth while to include these 
here. Of those which are more full or less 
conventional the following are examples: Os- 
wald Crawfurd has written in his 'Portugal': 
'My friends consider this my best work, and 
if they are right it is the fittest present I can 
give to Mrs. Chandler Moulton, the best 
friend this year, 1887, has brought me.' In 
the 1896 edition of ' Dawn ' the author says : 
'To Mrs. Chandler Moulton with the kind 
regards of H. Rider Haggard. P. S. Her 



POET AND FRIEND 287 

appreciation of this old "three-decker," wliich 
he remembers working very hard over, has 
pleased its antiquated author very much 
indeed, as he imagined that nowadays it only 
possessed a prehistoric interest.' In Lloyd 
Mifflin's 'The Fields of Dawn' is written: 
' You who know so well — by having so often 
encountered them yourself — the almost in- 
superable difficulties of the sonnet form, will 
be among the first to pardon the many short- 
comings of this little volume'; and in 'The 
Slopes of Parnassus ' are quoted WTith graceful 
modesty the lines of Tennyson: 

" For though its faults were thick as dust 
In vacant chambers, I could trust 
Your kindness. 

Nothing could be more graceful than the 
inscription of Arthur Sherburne Hardy: 'If 
the salut Passe Rose sang to Queen Hilde- 
garde (p. 354) had not already been verified 
for you, I should repeat it here. Faithfully 
yours, etc. ' The salut, as those mil remember 
who are as fond of 'Passe Rose' as I am, was : 

*' God give thee joy, 
And great honor. 

In her 'Brownies and Boggles' Miss Guiney 
has written : 

" * Of Brownyes and of Boggles fulle is this Beuk. 

Gawain Douglas, 1474-1522. 



g88 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

For the "Fairy" Godmother, from her chron- 
icler of elves. L. I. G.' And in * Goose- 
Quill Papers': 'To your most gracious 
hands these weeds and tares.' Clyde Fitch, 
in a copy of 'The Knighting of the Twins,' 
mounted from newspaper slips and bound by 
the author : ' Sweet singer — friendship is a 
blue, blue sky, — fair, ethereal, interminable, 
with an horizon made goldy with the sun of 
love. And your friendship — is a sky still 
more precious, a heavenly one.' Harriet 
Prescott Spofford inscribes 'An Inheritance,' 
'My dear Louise, with the love of her Hal,' 
and in turn Mrs. Moulton herself writes in a 
volume of Mrs. Spofford's 'Poems': 'To 
Philip Bourke Marston I give these poems of 
a woman whom I love.' Mrs. Clara Erskine 
Clement in 'Angels in Art': 'Alas! My pen 
was not "dropped from an angel's wing," 
but such things as it writ I send thee with my 
love.' In a copy of 'Berries of the Briar' 
I found with amused surprise, as I had not 
seen it for twenty years or so : ' Louise Chand- 
ler Moulton with Christmas greeting from 
The Briar, 1886. 

" ' Small worth claims my book 

Save the greeting it brings you. 
I pray you o'erlook 
Small worth. Claims my book 



POET AND FRIEND 289 

But that you deign to brook 

Its intrusion, in view 
That no worth claims my book 

Save the greeting it brings you.' 

Anybody could easily place this sort of verse 
without a date, for at that time, in the eighties, 
experiments in French forms were notoriously 
in fashion. In 'Love Lyrics,' in clear, incisive 
text one reads: 'For Mrs. Louise Chandler 
Moulton these humble lines — herein gath- 
ered by another than the author's hand — 
so doubly poor an exchange for her volume of 
real poetry entitled "At the Wind's Will." 
With all hale greetings of your ever grateful 
friend, James Wliitcomb Riley. Christmas 
of 1899. 

" ' At the Wind's WiU! — So sail these songs of thine 
Into the haven of hearts — the world's and mine — 
While anchoring-chant of crew and pilot saith: 
The Wind's will — yea, the will of God's own breath.' 

"In 'The World Beautiful' was inscribed: 
'To Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, whose 
graciousness and charm create a World Beau- 
tiful wherever she goes, this little book is 
offered, with grateful love.' Dr. Holmes' 
inscription is a copy of his well-known stanza : 
'And if I should live to be.' Edmund Clar- 
ence Stedman inscribes his 'Poems': 'To my 
loyal, lifelong friend, Louise Chandler Moul- 

19 



290 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

ton, Poet, mth love and homage. E. C. 
Stedman, Thanksgi\dng, 1897. 

" ' The Power that arches heaven's orb way round 
Gave to this planet's brood its soul of fire; 
Its heart of passion, — and for life unbound 
By chain or creed the measureless desire. — p. 126.' 

*'The 'American Anthology' three years 
later has: 'To my life-long, loyalest woman 
friend — my sister in life and song — Louise 
Chandler Moulton. Meet whom we may, 
no others comprehend save those who breathed 
the same air and drank the same waters when 
we trod the sunrise fields of Youth.' In 'The 
Poet's Chronicle,' privately printed in an 
edition of forty-four copies on Van Gelder 
paper, is written: 'My old friend, Louise 
Chandler Moulton, this piece not aimed at 
the public. Frederick Wedmore, 3rd July, 
1902.' 'Heartsease and Rue' Mr. Lowell 
presents 'to Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton 
with the kind regards of the author, who 
wishes her all heartsease and no rue.' In 
this volume, as in a number of others, a signed 
letter is inserted, either one which accom- 
panied the gift in the first place or which 
replied to the acknowledgment of the recipient. 
'Astrophel and Other Poems' is sent 'To Mrs. 
Moulton from x\. C. Swinburne in memoriam 
Philip Bourke Marston.' 



POET AND FRIEND 291 

"Among the Marston books are many of 
interest, but of them I have space to mention 
only two. One is a copy of 'Ecce Homo,' 
to 'Philip Bourke Marston from his god- 
mother, D. M. C, Aug. 13, 1866.' Dinah 
Mulock Craik's poem to her godson, 'Philip, 
my King,' is well known, and is alluded to 
in one of the inscriptions which I have al- 
ready quoted. Mr. Marston's godfather, Philip 
James Bailey, bestowed upon him a copy of 
'Festus,' with the inscription: ' Ce livre donne 
ajjectueusement par Vauteur a son cher filleul 
Philippe Bourke Marston, qui a deja par son 
propre genie etendue la renommee patrony- 
mique, est accompagne des voeux les plus 
sinceres pour la sante et pour son bonheur."' 
Just why French should be used in this con- 
nection is not evident, and perhaps I am not 
justified in feeling that 'Festus' Bailey was 
perhaps not without a secret pride in being 
able to achieve an inscription in that language. 
Be that as it may, however, the sentiment 
expressed is a graceful one, not ungracefully 
put. The third volume is a copy of Swin- 
burne's 'A Song of Italy.' In it is this note: 
'This copy was read by Mr. Swinburne, on 
March 30th, 1867, to Mr. Mazzini, and has 
been in the hand of the great Italian to 
whom it is dedicated. Presented to Philip 



292 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

Bourke Marston by Thomas Purnell, 12 April, 
1867.' 

"I have ah'eady much exceeded the Hmits 
witliin which in beginning this paper I meant 
to end. I have therefore no space in which 
to speak of the first and limited editions or of 
the privately printed books wliich add to the 
value of the collection. It is to me a source 
of much satisfaction that this fine and digni- 
fied memorial to Mrs. Moulton should be in 
the Public Library of Boston. The book- 
plate by Sidney L. Smith contains her 
portrait, and a catalogue of the books has 
been printed. Mrs. Moulton's work is her 
monument, but this will be an appropriate 
and fitting recognition of her place in Ameri- 
can letters and in the gracious company of 
New England's poets." 



The autograph letters left by Mrs. Moulton, 
the greater number wTitten to her personally 
but some which were well-nigh priceless (like 
the original of the famous letter in which 
Mi's. Browning stated her view of spiritual- 
ism) from the bequest of Mr. Marston, were 
carefully assorted, and by her daughter given 
to the Congressional Library at Washington. 
To them was added the large number of 



POET AND FRIEND 293 

autographed photographs wliich Mrs. Moulton 
had received as gifts from famous or distin- 
guished persons. 

The place of Louise Chandler Moulton as 
a writer is assured. The words of the London 
AthencBum in its memorial notice may be said 
to sum up the matter with entire justice when 
it said that her work "entitles her to her 
recognized position as the first poet, among 
women," in America, from the fact that her 
verse possesses "delicate and rare beauty, 
marked originality, and, what was better 
still, ... a sense of vivid and subtle imagi- 
nation, and that spontaneous feeling which 
is the essence of lyrical poetry." Her mas- 
tery of the sonnet-form has been commented 
upon in the words of critics of authority a 
number of times already in this volume, and 
neither this nor her wonderful instinct for 
metrical effect need be dwelt upon here. 
That she has left her place in American 
letters unfilled, and that no successor is in 
evidence will hardly be disputed. Few writ- 
ers of equal eminence have so completely 
escaped from all trace of mannerism, for 
unless a tendency to melancholy might be 
so classed her poetry is unusually free from 
this fault. The imaginative spontaneity of 



294 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON 

her verse made it impossible for artificiality 
to intrude; and even the sadness never 
seems forced or affected. The beauty of 
feeling and the exquisite melody of her verse 
have in them the savor of immortality. 
I To her friends the remembrance of her 
genius for friendship, — for it amounted to 
that, — her wonderful and unworldly kindness 
which overflowed in all her acts, the sym- 
pathy which no demands could exhaust, 
must seem hardly less a title to continued 
remembrance than her poetic powers. Her 
life was singularly complete, singularly for- 
tunate, in its conditions. It was a life enriched 
with genius, friendship, and love, and above 
all it was the life of one whose nature was 
golden throughout with the appreciation of 
beauty and the instinctive generosity which 
gave as freely as it Kad received. 

She had entered into the larger life where 

No work begun shall ever pause for death, 

and where all the nobler energies of the spirit 
shall enter into eternal beauty. 










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